My Lords, I, too, am sympathetic to a lot of what my noble friend Lord Flight said and what the Federation of Small Businesses and others have represented to us all, or to many of us anyway.
I am particularly concerned about the position of trade creditors who find themselves involved in a liquidation, a bankruptcy or whatever. What matters to them is not 10% of the total amount owed by the company; it is the percentage of their own turnover that matters. What can be quite a small sum in the bankruptcy as a whole may be a very large sum relative to the business of the trade creditor. At the same time, I understand that in some respects the system of meetings we currently have is a rather Victorian process, carried forward. I encourage the Government to consider looking for ways in which the process can be streamlined and brought up to date.
I want to make a quite separate point which is just about relevant to this point in the Bill. It is that once we have finished with this Bill and it becomes a law, the Insolvency Act 1986 seriously needs consolidation. When we get to the stage where sections such as 246ZF and a whole lot of others will be littering the Insolvency Act and a whole lot more as a result of this Bill—quite apart from other amendments that have been made or may be made to it—it will be a terrible muddle. I realise that the legal publishers will straighten it all out for us to some extent in their consolidated publications on legislation, but the Act seriously needs consolidation. Once all this is over, I hope the Minister will urge that on the department and get the process to move, because we all know that it is a very slow process.
Part of my interest in this is that the trade creditors need to have an idea of what is going on. If they look at the Act and discover it littered with sections such as 246ZF and so on, it will be even more difficult for them to do so. As others have said throughout the debate, it is important that there is transparency. Understanding of what is going on needs to be possible, even for those who are not doing it all the time. Of course, the creditors will have guidance from the insolvency practitioners, and I share the view of them that has been expressed. I have much less experience than my noble friend Lord Leigh but I, too, am a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, though by no means as distinguished a one as he, but I do share that view.