My Lords, briefly, Amendment 31 seems to introduce a new dimension to the responsibilities of the commissioner, quite apart from the matter of fines, which I would not be in favour of. In the small business sector, lots of businesses are being formed, but lots, I regret to say, are going out of business. That also applies to their customers—the larger businesses.
Plenty of them get into trouble from time to time. Repeated failure to pay an invoice may be simply a signal that the invoices are never going to be paid. If one is not careful, the idea that the commissioner should become responsible for credit checks and for a whole host of commercial interventions, completely changes the situation.
As I understand it, the commissioner is there to look in particular at the question of late payment as a cultural issue, and to change the culture in a business which appears to have worsened in recent years. I can understand that, but the minute that we start to get into the detailed financial circumstances of individual businesses, the commissioner is in real trouble.