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Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

A number of smaller firms sometimes find that they are working perfectly satisfactorily and are then hit by a large bad debt. Their security of payment has completely gone. They then have to lay off people who have been working jolly hard, because something further up the line has been visited upon them and they do not have the capacity to sustain it. We will lose a lot of jobs in the construction industry in very small firms, not because they have not been trying to work properly, but because people up the line who have owed them substantial sums have failed. That domino effect will have a major impact on small businesses.