Speeches by McDougall.

“In many cases, it is leading to an absolute rip-off of businesses when they are already struggling with energy prices, but DESNZ intends to do something about it.”

“As I say, DESNZ has said that it intends to act quite quickly to regulate those.”

“We have a whole suite of advice for small businesses, which is about helping them make the right choices to lower their energy costs. For example, in the west midlands at the moment, we are also piloting our energy advice service, which combines grants for energy efficiency and things that would reduce energy prices, a…”

“It is £5 billion across hundreds of communities across the country, so it is sizable, notwithstanding that.”

“Again, this would be a matter for colleagues in DESNZ. It is the occupational hazard of being Small Business Minister that I do keep referring to other people.”

“We will be having ongoing discussions on that, but I would be happy to keep the Committee updated on it.”

“Again, I am going to be very careful not to stand on my DESNZ colleagues’ toes. As with DESNZ, as with Treasury and as with all bits of Government, we are constantly making the case for small businesses.”

“I know that you have just had a session on higher-end crime. This is something that is primarily led by the Home Office. For our part, we are working in co-ordination with it on tackling retail crime. In addition to what the Home Office is doing on law enforcement by making the assault of a retail worker a specific cri…”

“My colleague Minister McDonald has been working to make sure that the support goes all the way through the supply chain. On the point on cyber-security, I met with the digital adoption taskforce this morning to talk about this. If you are Jaguar Land Rover or Marks & Spencer, a cyber-attack can be extraordinarily costl…”

“That is a really important point. I know that you are very aware of the work that DBT does in terms of industries in distress. There is a strong argument that you are making about pre-empting that and having a proper mapping of supply chains and vulnerabilities there, which I am very happy to take away and work with Mi…”

“I have not seen that correspondence. I am very happy to look at that.”

“I am very happy to go away and look at that, but you make a good point, which is that we have to make sure that investing in these things is something that is seen as being on the right side of the column.”

“That is a good point well made, and perhaps something that we need to review. There may sometimes be an assumption that women are often better represented at the SME level than other levels of business. Maybe there was an assumption that it was in the share price. I know that you know, because I sat and listened to you…”

“Can I hand over to my official? I should say that I was not there during the writing of this, but Isobel was.”

“No, they are not, which is why we are consulting on this at the moment. As the Chair said, the enormous cost to the economy of about £11 billion from late payments is only part of the story. 133 million hours of staff time are spent chasing late payments. I mentioned this job being cathartic at times. I go back to roug…”

“I will not abuse my position. What I would say in terms of the code is that we have replaced the prompt payment code with the fair payment code. That is more than just a name change. Under the new code, you have to get the gold standard, silver standard or bronze standard of payment practices. You have to give more evi…”

“I saw that story too. Sometimes when you see stories in the press, you can work out what their provenance was. On that one, I simply could not. There is a real determination in Government, evidenced by the fact that the Prime Minister was there for the launch and was so enthusiastic around the proposals that we have fo…”

“No, it is not. I have been the small business person on the phone, and it is incredibly frustrating when you simply do not have enough time in the day to run your business at the best of times. The FSB reckons that small businesses spend about 44 hours and £4,500 a year on dealing with HMRC. What I would say is that, i…”

“That is still shy of the 85% target, but, when you consider that we inherited 66% of those calls being answered, it does show progress.”

“No, of course not.”