MP backs plans to support small businesses put at risk by scourge of late payments
Small businesses have been forced to close due to late payments
A city MP has welcomed plans to introduce landmark legislation to support Portsmouth’s small businesses by ending the scourge of late payments and backing millions of sole traders, freelancers, and family firms across the country.
The Small Business Protections Bill is set to deliver the toughest crackdown on late payments in a generation, putting a clear duty on large firms to pay smaller suppliers on time and giving small businesses the certainty they need to keep investing, supporting jobs and growing their communities.
Late payments have been reported to close 38 businesses every single day because they are not paid on time. For business owners, the impact can be immediate and personal, forcing them to spend hours chasing invoices instead of running their businesses and putting jobs and livelihoods at risk.
Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan’s support for the bill follows hosting the city’s hospitality sector in Parliament this week, where attendees shared directly with the hospitality minister, Kate Dearden MP, their ideas and concerns.
Mr Morgan said: “These sweeping new reforms will fundamentally change how businesses pay each other, ending the delays and practices that have hit the valued small businesses the hardest.
“This bill is standing up for our city’s small businesses, the backbone of our local community, by restoring fairness, dignity and security for small business owners and the self-employed.
“Too many local business owners do everything right but are still left lying awake at night wondering how they’ll pay their staff or cover their bills because of the challenges they are facing, including not being paid what they are owed.
“These reforms rightly form part of a wider commitment to protecting our small businesses, which I continue to give my full support towards”.
Business secretary Peter Kyle said: “Costing the UK economy £11bn every single year, late payments choke growth, cost jobs, and force too many good businesses to close. That ends today.
“Through this landmark bill we are delivering the toughest payment reforms in over a generation, to give the UK the strongest legal framework in the G7, and back small businesses with the certainty they need to grow and thrive”.