The now-ex Small Business Commissioner, Paul Uppal, has accused the Government of thwarting attempts to help SMEs tackle the late payment scourge.
Mr Uppal has reportedly blamed Whitehall for pushing him out of a role which, he says, is under-resourced and ignored by government.
He said that his office was met with “radio silence” from civil servants and ministers over his approach to the job and that his budget was too small to tackle the “huge task” of getting big companies to pay small businesses on time.
He also revealed a little more detail about the reason for his sacking, which was “a disagreement over an alleged conflict of interest related to an unpaid, interim advisory role in another government-backed small business scheme”.
The Times, is the only national broadsheet to cover the story, although it has been picked up by the online publication smallbusiness.co.uk.
It seems that The Times is becoming the champion of SMEs, carrying another article on the same day about a poll from the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) that found that almost one in six businesses said most payments are settled late. Malcolm Harrison, chief executive of CIPS, said there was a “rotten culture” of late payment. The organisation has been calling for big businesses that are slow to settle invoices to be barred from public sector work.
Another poll out this week from Xero, the online accountancy platform, revealed that a quarter of small business owners believe their company will go bust within 5 years, with 54% warning that late payments posed a risk to their firm.
The FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) has repeatedly said that late payment is the cause of an estimated 50,000 small businesses go under each year because of “pernicious” late payment. This figure might be questioned given that there were 17,454 formal company insolvencies in 2018 however I accept a liberal interpretation to allow for sole traders and companies ceasing to trade.
Does the Government care about or understand the pressures on SMEs?
According to research from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, at the start of 2018 a massive 99.9% of the 5.7 million businesses in the UK are small or medium-size businesses (SMEs). Of these only 0.6% of businesses in the UK are classed at medium-sized businesses.
This arguably makes SMEs an essential contributor to the economy and the provision of jobs.
Yet there has been no word on the appointment of a replacement for Mr Uppal, since I reported in my blog on November 19 the Government’s statement: “An open recruitment campaign to appoint a new Small Business Commissioner will get started immediately.”
Allegedly Fiona Dickie, the Deputy Pubs Code Adjudicator, was to provide oversight in the Small Business Commissioner role until early November, pending the appointment of an interim commissioner.
However, there has been a deafening silence from her, the General Election notwithstanding.
It has to be asked why an unpaid, voluntary advisory role for Mr Uppal was deemed to be a conflict of interest with his official position?
I have asked previously and I repeat my question: has the Government been successfully lobbied by some large corporates to roll back this initiative? Was he becoming too successful?