Does the government actually pay its bills?...

I read this morning in the Telegraph, or perhaps it was yesterday, in the business section an interesting little report about government payments.

As you may remember the government made a big song and dance about paying all its bills and invoices within 10 days last year to keep money flowing in the economy.

However a survey of small businesses found that the vast majority of them that worked with public sector bodies had found that bills often took a lot longer than that to get paid.

The government had responded saying that something like 98% of its invoices had been paid within 10 days.

So clearly something is going wrong: is every business in the land lying about its experience, or does the government simply not have a clue about what invoices it is paying and when? If the last 12 years or so are anything to go by I think we all know the answer, don't we!

Re : Does the government actually pay its bills?

Doesn't surprise me... Labour have made such a mess of everything in my opinion and I can't believe they set out to be this bad... therefore presumably they don't actually have any clue as to what is going on, what is and isn't being paid etc.