My Lords, I wish briefly to comment on the amendments, particularly following the comments of my noble friend Lord Cotter, who spoke on this issue of late payments.
Obviously, late payments are invidious. They affect small businesses severely, particularly in terms of cash flow. However, in looking at these amendments, there is a balance that we have to get right. There is a
danger, certainly in some of the amendments, that we will overregulate. I refer particularly to Amendment 6, which has a requirement for quarterly reports and indicates that all payments to suppliers made more than 30 days after the date indicated have to be listed in some way, unless a formal query has been made on the invoice. The danger is that if one overregulates, all that will happen is that businesses will be inundated with formal queries as a way of avoiding the reporting.
Also important—if one is going to require all this information to be collated—is the reality that in many sectors balancing the payment of bills, whether we like it or not, sometimes protects the cash flow of certain companies that otherwise could be in difficulty. If this information is made more public in detail, there could be consequences for the management of the credit of those companies. So there are problems of overregulation that could be bureaucratic and inflexible, and could damage the businesses that we are trying to help.