Minister For Local Government And Inner Cities And Withholding Of Payments By Psa

EDM number 1295 in 1992-93, proposed by Alan Williams on 01/02/1993.

That this House notes that, with the encouragement of the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities, the Government promotes two conflicting policies for the payment of its bills; observes that overtly the Treasury advises departments to pay bills within 30 days, but notes preparations to flout this by BMM, the publicly-owned building management division of Property Services Agency under its Pay When Paid system, which is being developed with the agreement of the Minister of State, Department of the Environment, as 'the most important task ... on the route to privatisation'; warns that under Pay When Paid it is intended that BMM deliberately will delay authorised payments to its suppliers; notes that the PSA's Newsletter of the Pay When Paid Project, December 1992, boasted 'PWP is all about being able to generate cash' and goes on to say 'We are focussing on MoD ... who account for the vast majority of our works bills and present the greatest cash collection problems'; points out that the innocent victims of this inter-departmental conflict will be BMM's sub-contractors, who will be forced to sign contracts accepting that they will not be paid by BMM until BMM has been paid by the MoD or other departments; and condemns this abuse of its sub-contractors as a cynical part of the fattening-up process to improve BMM's cash-flow before privatisation at the expense of its captive suppliers, even at risk of their insolvency.

This motion has been signed by a total of 55 MPs.