Enterprise Act 2002 (Disqualification from Office: General) Order 2006

The Minister said that Members of your Lordships’ House would be disqualified in the same way in which MPs and MEPs were, and that that was a direct consequence of the Act. When the honourable Member for Wealden asked him the question in another place, the Minister who was answering made a distinction between Members of this House who were elected and those who were appointed; in other words, the 91 hereditary Peers who came back in after the reforms and those who were here by appointment. He said that he would write to the honourable Member and explain the difference, and at the same time tell him how the rule applied to members of parish councils. I think it would be useful to have that clarification on the record rather than in a private letter to the honourable Member, although no doubt copies will have been placed in the Library if that letter has already been sent. I should also be interested to know what procedures there must be in your Lordships’ House for a person who is covered by the disqualification to be excluded. Surely it requires some sort of resolution, or does the person concerned disappear in a puff of a smoke? Does the Minister agree that there is an anomaly in that a person who is convicted of a criminal offence may continue to sit and vote in this place, but that a person who is covered by these bankruptcy restriction orders is automatically disqualified? It seems to be a disproportionately severe penalty compared with what happens in criminal convictions. I also want to ask the Minister a question that arises out of a question put to him by my honourable friend the Member for Cambridge, who wanted to know whether the Government had any evidence that the increase in the number of people making themselves bankrupt, as the noble Lord mentioned, was associated with the benefit of an increase in entrepreneurship, which the Act is meant to bring. I imagine it may be too early for the department to have conducted any research, but it would be interesting to know whether the Minister has any opinion on that. The Minister who answered certainly did not reply to it directly. We obviously agree that entrepreneurship should be encouraged by every possible means, and if there was evidence from the working of this Act that one of its by-products was that more people were becoming bankrupt as a result of taking risks in business, that would make us a little more reconciled to the idea of the large number of bankruptcies that are occurring than if we thought it was simply a matter of people irresponsibly accumulating large amounts of consumer debt.