Members will be able to check Hansard for the exact phraseology, but I was attempting to paraphrase the hon. Gentleman rather than to quote him. He said, if I remember rightly and can quote him more directly, that the FSB was not always right, or that it was wrong on this issue. He said that he believed he was right and the FSB was wrong on the issue—is that close enough? Anyway, anyone who wants the word-by-word definition can check it in Hansard.
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Some 60% of Britain’s small businesses report that late payment is a problem, and as far as I am concerned, that is all that matters. It is important that small businesses, which on average are waiting for £38,186 in overdue payments every week, should be satisfied. The hon. Member for Ipswich was right to say that different Governments have come forward with measures to address late payment, and we continually return to that. None of us wants the issue to return in a few years’ time and for us to go round again and recycle the whole debate, so it is important to come up with a solution that gives small businesses the sense that we are taking the matter seriously. One in four companies spends more than 10 hours a week chasing late payments, and evidence from the Federation of Small Businesses indicates that more than half of small businesses are not paid promptly by large companies, with the average payment time being 58 days—nearly double the normal contract time.
The hon. Gentleman was right to say that we cannot sit in this place and say what a fair level of payment is across every business sector, but we are attempting to deal with people who pay businesses later than expected. It is right for the Government to ask questions of the major supermarket chains, for example, and say, “If you are buying comestible products that are out of date within four or five days of their arriving in your store, is it legitimate to say that you cannot pay someone for 90 or 120 days after that point, since the product will long since have been consumed or expired?” It is legitimate to ask those questions.
Insolvency specialists have estimated that one in five business failures is down to bills being paid late rather than a failed business model. During the recession, it is estimated that 4,000 businesses failed as a direct result of late payments. Often businesses get paid late, pass on late payments to their suppliers because they are waiting
for money, and someone down the line who was in no way the cause of the problem goes bust. It is right constantly to consider how to address that issue. My message to the hon. Gentleman and the Government is that we should not say that nothing can be done. We must not give up; we must ensure that we act on behalf of those small businesses.