Legislative Reform

The practitioners have a duty to try to identify the unidentified creditors. The point of the order is to give them flexibility and choice on how they try to do that. It is important to be serious for a moment. I am not arguing that the London Gazette sells as well as the daily or local papers, but it plays an important role. It is used by credit reference agencies, financial institutions, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, trade suppliers and so on. It is intended not to be in the living rooms of every citizen every night, but to act as a central record to which people from anywhere in the country can go to find out information about these matters. It plays a valuable role. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) accused me of having a cunning plan, although I was not sure about what the nature of it was. Let me assure him and the House that my and the Government's only intention with the order is to get a better deal for creditors and for the small businesses, about which we have heard, that are often at the sharp end of insolvencies. The change is worth having; it would be a mistake for hon. Members to oppose good measures because they wanted other, wider measures that would not even be appropriate for legislative reform orders. Let us play on the pitch that we are on: legislative reform orders are appropriate for making particular changes. It would not be a good service to small businesses, which we care about, if we turned down a change that could benefit them; those other concerns should be dealt with in another way. In conclusion, we often hear calls to reduce red tape and regulation, and they are repeated often in the House. However, there is little point in our calling for reductions in regulations and red tape in general and then opposing those reductions in the particular, when they are brought before the House. This measure is a benefit worth having. On that note, I ask the House to disagree with the Regulatory Reform Committee's report and approve the order. Question put and agreed to. Resolved,"That this House disagrees with the Regulatory Reform Committee in its recommendation that the draft Legislative Reform (Insolvency) (Advertising Requirements) Order 2009 should not be approved."