I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for his contribution on the scope of the complaints handling and the point that he made about late payments to public authorities, which I will come to in a minute. I am also delighted that my noble friends Lord Hodgson and Lady Byford have joined us for the debates on the Bill. I know that they will bring a great deal to our discussion. Before he leaves for his constitutional engagement, I thank my noble
friend Lord Cope for bringing us his long experience of the extremely difficult issue of people not paying their bills on time, which we as a Government are now seeking to address.
For completeness, perhaps I should mention Amendments 13 and 18, which I do not think anyone has focused on, which would allow the commissioner to handle a complaint made by a small business against another small business or a medium-sized business. The Bill provides that the commissioner’s complaints scheme will handle complaints by small business suppliers about payment-related issues with larger businesses—that is, a medium-sized or large business. The intention here is to help small firms where they suffer because of an imbalance in bargaining power when dealing with larger businesses. I think that that responds to one of the points made.