Legislative Reform (Insolvency) (Advertising Requirements) Order 2009

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this draft order. I am sure that many of your Lordships approve of measures to reduce red tape, so the Government are to be congratulated on at least trying. However, needless to say, there are one or two matters that I should like to raise. Before doing so, I ought perhaps to disclose that, at an earlier stage in my career when working in a major firm of chartered accountants, I worked in the insolvency field. The House of Commons Regulatory Reform Committee expressed its surprise that the order was not more ambitious—even the Minister called it modest. The committee said: ""Given the widespread concerns about insolvency procedures … we believe that it would be more appropriate for the proposal to be considered together with the other proposals expected from the Department as part of the overall project to modernise insolvency legislation"." Will the Minister provide an update on the status of these other proposals? The Minister in the other place mentioned—I think, in this context—what he called the "April-May timetable". It is April, so why the rush with this subject in isolation? According to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, ""LROs form a key part of the Government’s better regulation agenda"." Yet while more than 1,300 statutory instruments are passed each year, just 20 LROs are scheduled to come into force in 2009. The Minister will accept, therefore, that we are more than a little sceptical of the Government’s robustness in this area. The Regulatory Reform Committee’s concern at the narrow focus of the order might be said to corroborate a scepticism that this order is being introduced to make it look as though the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is trying to be seen as fulfilling the mandate in the second half of its name, without adequate underpinning substance. Would the Minister care to comment on that? Does it not worry him that, if LROs are such a central plank of this important policy area, this particular LRO has been labelled by the Regulatory Reform Committee—a committee on which the Labour Party has an absolute majority of eight to six—as, ""so minor as to cause doubt as to its usefulness"?" In response to the government consultation document on the draft order, the Newspaper Society raised concerns that the proposals would discourage liquidators from using local newspapers. Have the Government considered this point and are they concerned by it? The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform states that this order will result in annual savings of about £3.4 million. This figure is based on an estimate that 80 per cent of voluntary insolvencies will not need additional advertising beyond the London Gazette entry, because directors will hand over the books of account, which will contain a full list of creditors. The Regulatory Reform Committee labelled this argument "unconvincing". Is there not a danger that, given that the firm is facing insolvency, the books will not have been as diligently maintained as they should have been? Finally, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 holds that, among other conditions, a proposed change to the law must not deprive anyone of necessary protection. The Regulatory Reform Committee argues: ""We are not satisfied that the retention of requirements to advertise in the Gazette, even when taken with the availability of information from other sources including the internet, will necessarily protect"," creditors. In the Minister’s view, is this order compatible with the 2006 Act?