My Lords, in moving Amendment 4, I will also speak to Amendment 5 in my name. In doing so, I am conscious that I will be talking about some issues that we have already discussed as we have gone through the different stages of the Bill.
Amendment 4
“would place an obligation on the Secretary of State to report the number of former directors of dissolved companies investigated and disqualified by the Insolvency Service.”
The purpose of this is to collect data on whether the provisions in Clauses 2 and 3 would work as intended: to help to understand the sufficiency of the Insolvency Service’s funding and resourcing, as we have already highlighted. This relates to Amendment 5, which
“would place an obligation on the Secretary of State to make a statement on the impact of this Act on the financial situation of the Insolvency Service.”
I have tabled these amendments in the hope that the Government will give further information on their plans to fund the Insolvency Service properly and allay our ongoing concerns about its resourcing. At present, the Bill makes no mention of further funding for the Insolvency Service, despite creating new obligations to carry out investigations.
The provisions in the Bill to remove the restoration hurdle mean that the Insolvency Service will now be expected retrospectively to investigate the directors of dissolved companies and then apply to court for a disqualification order to be made against the said directors. Can the Minister estimate how many additional staff will be required to carry out just the retrospective investigations and, separately, how many to apply for the new disqualification orders? I am sure that the Minister would agree that an overstretched Insolvency Service would benefit no one, but there is real concern at the moment around the Government giving new powers to the service without the resources to back it up.
At Second Reading, the Minister responded to these concerns by saying:
“The Insolvency Service’s resources are not limitless.”—[Official Report, 19/10/21; col. GC 55.]
We would certainly not argue that they should be; we are simply asking for a guarantee that the service will be supported to fulfil its new responsibilities. I beg to move.