My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for their contributions to this debate, and I thank the Minister for introducing the new regulations. I do not imagine he thought they would be quite as controversial as they appear to be.
However, the regulations extend the Secretary of State’s powers to modify, temporarily, corporate insolvency or governance legislation in response to coronavirus until 29 April 2022. We repeatedly said during the passage of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 that we supported the changes the Government were making. We called many times for the end date of provisions to be delayed in order to support business through this difficult period. Businesses are still in
distress, and the lockdown and business disruption will continue beyond the original date in the provisions—the end of April this year.
The system of business support that was set up for three months has not proven adequate for the length of time that the crisis is continuing. In truth, we do not yet know whether all the restrictions will be lifted after 21 June, when social restrictions are due to be ended. BEIS has said that the one-year extension reflects that, while there is a vaccination programme, with national lockdowns and other restrictions on normal trading continuing, the future impact of the pandemic on business and the insolvency regime remains at least uncertain. The Minister mentioned this in his introduction, but can he clarify whether the other measures in the Act will be extended, such as on wrongful trading?
It is only sensible to maintain the option of further extending the measures in the Act in this way: we have the worst economic recession of any country in the G7. Although the Covid support measures that the Government put in place have given business a stay of execution, we are concerned that we may still see a wave of insolvencies as support is withdrawn and the safety net dissolves.
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