25 signatures reached
To: The Chancellor - for UK national, regional and local government policy
Government should only contract with those that #PayIn30Days
All organisations that local, regional and national Government contract with, licence or fund must be contractually obliged to pay all their suppliers within 30 days.
Why is this important?
I have been campaigning for this for 20 years and each year the debilitating cashflow problems increase for 1 in 6 of the adult workforce that are running their own businesses.
Many large corporations are making money by keeping their smaller busness suppliers waiting for payment (an average of 72 days). This is as much due to unfair contract terms of above 30 days (e.g. 60 day and 75 day terms are prevalent) which smaller businesses cannot afford to refuse as it is to late payment.
Micro (0-9 employees) business owners (96% of all businesses) especially cannot afford to complain about bad payment practice from their biggest customers.
Whilst the 5 million self employed people in the UK rarely have large corporations as their customers they have customers that do have large organisations as customers. On average self employed people earn £60 a week less today than in 1995 (£240 as against £300) and a major reason for this is higher costs and indebtedness (credit facilities and loans) due to crippling cashflow issues.
If all those organisations that national, regional and local Government contract with, licence or fund paid ALL their suppliers within 30 days it would get over £96 billion, per annum, circulating twice as fast in the economy and help micro business owners make ends meet, earn the living wage and many more would be able to grow their businesses.
As most of the new jobs each year come from newly self employed people their abilty to suvive and thrive is important for the UK economy as well. #PayIn30Days
