The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I am glad that Members can cite important statistics by the ONS in the Chamber, given the importance of our having statistical accuracy which we have heard about.
On the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, we have a commitment on the living wage for businesses involved in major Government contracts, as well as to increasing the minimum wage to £8 by 2020. We also have a broader commitment to a skills-based economy in which we can create jobs that deliver wages that people can live on, as ultimately that is what will make the biggest difference to increasing wages, rather than the use of Government regulation as a silver bullet.
The small business community took pleasure from the arrival of a small business Bill. We give the Government credit for bringing forward a Bill with the words “Small Business” in its title, as such businesses have been overlooked in recent years. However, sadly, the opportunity to include in the Bill many of the measures that we proposed to benefit small business has passed us by. Provision on late payments is a classic example, as the Government had a real opportunity to support a late payment plan that would ensure that the onus to pursue payment—eventually through the courts, but initially through invoicing—was removed from small businesses that are owed money. Despite the sensible evidence that the Committee heard from the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), among others, about why small businesses do not pursue their big business customers, the Government did not support our measure, which was backed by the Forum of Private Business and the Federation of Small Businesses, and would have been a significant step forward. However, on a more positive note, the Government talked yesterday about how they could strengthen the prompt payment code and ensure that businesses with payment terms of longer than 60 days would not be considered to be prompt payers.