My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 61ADD, which would bring in these powers more quickly. The Graham review did a very thorough job and made its proposals, but surely a year is long enough to see whether the industry is going to take note of what was said and respond. As the noble Lord opposite said, there is no doubt that there have been some highly dubious pre-packs and, although I am sure that our insolvency practitioners are, indeed, the envy of the world, some may not be quite as worthy of envy, apart from in respect of the fees they charge. There is a need to deal with this issue more speedily.
I also have qualms about the definition of “connected persons”. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister would explore whether in a certain situation where a company borrows money from the bank and the bank then sells that debt to an organisation, which may eventually end up being part of a pre-pack that buys the business, that purchaser of debt should, indeed, be classed as a connected person. At present, they would not be connected persons. This was recommended by the Graham review, which wanted to
keep things very narrowly defined and not bring in debt at all. However, I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that this is at least worth investigating.