Federation of Small Businesses

And I think what's interesting about Mamdani is that he's recognised that you can peel off parts of the small self-employed to a progressive movement.

And he's done that by specifically go in all his videos about the bodegas in New York and like the cheap hot dogs and all that sort of stuff he's targeting them and Corbyn did that to an extent in 2017 gave a speech to like you know the Federation of Small Businesses which went down really well I would argue that what Burnham's doing now is again quite sensible is saying like we need to revive the high street we need to help small businesses and what's funny to me is that you've got people in Labour particularly in Wales like oh all these small business owners have gone to reform I was like yeah because reform have just gone to them and seen what you want All right, we want you on this.

We'll give it to you.

That's how politics works.

Now, there will also be increased transparency for large firms, meaning boards or audit committees of large, persistently late-paying companies will be required to publicly explain their poor payment performance and set out the steps they're making to improve it.

This was developed in close consultation with the Federation of Small Businesses.

Now, under the bill, there will also be a statutory deadline for raising invoice disputes.

If a business customer misses that deadline, they'll be required to owe the supplier compensation, closing off the tactic of sitting on a disputed invoice indefinitely.

For many large organizations, reputation is a powerful driver, arguably more powerful in practice than legal remedies that small suppliers are reluctant to use.

Sometimes the mechanism that actually shifts behavior isn't the fine, it's the public accountability, and that has real relevance for a sector like architecture, where large developer and contractor clients care about their public standing.

Now, the government's announcement notes this element was developed in close working with the Federation of Small Businesses and the FSB's policy chair.

This audit committee provision as a vital step is changing late payment culture and putting payment performance in front of the people inside a large organization who are supposed to be holding management to account.

You see how the panel's just jumping on him, trying to pretend that there's no evidence that Brexit has damaged us financially? Even though literally every industry body in the country has been screaming for the past five years that Brexit is ruining them.

The National Farmers Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chamber of Commerce, the SMT, the car industry, the British Medical Association, the NHS, the banking sector in London, the Food and Drink Federation.

Now, given that all of our industries are saying that Brexit is damaging them individually, it is the job of economists to try and calculate what that's done to the economy as a whole, which is why you get figures like 100 billion a year or 90 billion a year.

And yet that panel is trying to argue that, well, you have no proof that Brexit is actually damaging us that much.

And in terms of representation, if you're big, you might be a member of the CBI.

If you're a small business, you might be a member of the Federation of Small Businesses, or maybe your local chamber of commerce.

You would also quite likely to be represented by, you think of yourself by sector and be represented as such.

So you might be an engineering company or a builder or a retailer.

But if you run a small or medium-sized business, what is the main thing preventing you from taking on more people? 0345 6060 973.

David Hale is Director of Government Affairs of the Federation of Small Businesses and joins me now.

David, very good evening to you.

Now, the ONS put this down to wage pressures What would you put it down to, the lack of job vacancies? David, I think you're muted.

Let's go back to David Hale.

Hopefully we can hear him now.

He's director of government affairs of the Federation of Small Businesses.

David, we heard there from Poppy, who runs a small business in a particular sector.