Legislative Reform

My fears come from the reality of current practice. As the Minister explained, fees can be subject to legal challenge. We now have an unambiguous statement on the record from a Minister of the Crown that makes it clear that if subsequent proceedings challenged whether advertising savings were not passed on to the creditor, it would be wrong for the practitioner to do that. If my right hon. Friend the Minister disagrees with that interpretation, I would welcome an intervention from him. As he does not want to intervene, I think we now have absolute clarity on his meaning. I do not think that there is any dispute around the House. I took particular interest in this order because it coincided with my dealing with a specific case. It is not fair to name the individual concerned, because he is a constituent who, despite his best efforts, has unfortunately been bankrupted. The action came, as it quite often does with small businesses, from HMRC. The sum involved was £5,249.52. The final costs—the amount that he was required to pay in full—were £34,293.81. I cannot find any legitimate basis for some of the fees listed. Trustees' future remuneration cost £2,500, legal fees were estimated at £5,000 and trustees' remuneration was estimated at £7,659. That seems an absurd set of fees for dealing with something that could have been knocked out on the back of a fag packet in five minutes. The Committee and I want to be sure that in dealing with the order, which genuinely makes a welcome saving, we do not lose sight of the bigger picture. When we introduce the miscellaneous provisions order and all the rule changes that my right hon. Friend the Minister rightly wants to introduce, we need to get to grips with some of these stupid things. They are stupid. There can be no basis for the emergence of figures such as those in my example. The Committee did not oppose the substance of the Government's proposal; in fact, we did quite the opposite. We were concerned that the documents before us did not inspire confidence that there was determination to drive the process forward and to ensure that people such as my constituent do not face figures that are out of kilter with any measure of reality. I would hope that, on the basis of the assurance that my right hon. Friend the Minister gave to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and me, we will be able to make progress and ensure that when the full picture emerges—including the draft order that we are due to see, I am told, "in early April"—it is much more transparent and helps hon. Members giving help and guidance to their constituents to feel confident that fee structures are based on fair and reasonable practices. I hope that they will be able to be confident that insolvency is fair to the people who have often worked extremely hard but whose businesses have failed for reasons beyond their control—brought to an end by something further up the food chain—and to their creditors, and that it is not focused on the financial interests of the professionals charged with managing the process of insolvency. The Committee also wants my right hon. Friend to assure us that although we disagree on the order the Department will make no attempt—I do not mean this pejoratively—to steamroller the Committee into a line of thinking. The Minister's assurance on the procedures and practices that were given when the rules were established should also be maintained. We could have used our nuclear option and sought to veto the order. The Minister would have been honour bound to accept our veto, but we do not want to get into that sort of game. We want to ensure that the processes that evolve from the Committee's work enable us constructively to progress the legislative reform process. I hope that the Minister will give the Committee the assurances that it seeks in that regard as well.