My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for building up StepChange. I can only express my regret at the news that he will be stepping down. He leaves a great legacy there and I know that he will be much missed. I pay tribute also to the other DRO facilitators, including Citizens Advice.
Turning to the wider subject, last Friday the Government introduced legislation to increase DRO eligibility. This included raising the debt and asset limits to make DROs more accessible for the most vulnerable debtor: those with low levels of debt and limited resources, and for whom bankruptcy is too expensive. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned high bankruptcy application costs. He may already be aware that we will be introducing in 2016 a new debtor petition application process, which will allow a person to pay the application costs by instalments. As part of the announcement last week, the Government committed to fully reviewing DROs again two years after the changes come into effect on 1 October this year. We, of course, consulted on these changes, including on the fee paid to the facilitators of DROs. The majority of respondents, including CAB, which is the largest facilitator, stated that they did not want to increase the fee, being mindful of the need to keep this important service affordable.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has agreed today that increasing the fee is not the solution. As he pointed out, the Insolvency Service receives £80 for its element of the DRO application process. Unfortunately, as I have explained to him outside the Committee,
Treasury rules preclude the Insolvency Service from setting its fee at less than this figure, which represents full cost recovery. It is important that the Insolvency Service works hard to keep its costs as low as possible. The DRO unit has recently undertaken a lean review and is focused on continually improving its service. This service includes verifying DRO applications, providing an advice service to the facilitators and considering creditor objections to the granting of DROs. The Insolvency Service has also committed to an upgrade of the IT system providing the electronic DRO solution, which may help. The upgrade will improve response times and make the system more user-friendly, potentially saving time and resources for DRO facilitators. I must thank facilitators such as StepChange for providing a lot of input into those improvements.
This Government do not feel that there is a need for an additional review. However, we will continue to look at ways to improve the administrative processes, which will be of benefit to the facilitators and affect the underlying costings. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said about good practice in Scotland. More broadly, before I finish, the Government are very keen to ensure that anyone facing debt worries seeks independent, reputable and free debt advice at an early stage. We have put the funding of free debt advice on a sustainable footing through the Money Advice Service. The Government have also commissioned an independent review of the Money Advice Service to make an assessment of the need for debt advice and education. The review, and the Government’s response, will be published shortly. We have had a good debate on this important subject, albeit again a bilateral one. I hope that on this basis, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.