My Lords, we have tabled this amendment to ensure that should an FE body become insolvent, there will be an accessible public record of documents relevant to the insolvency procedure for that body. FE bodies that are statutory corporations are exempt charities and not companies. As such, they are not subject to filing requirements with any particular regulatory body, although they are required to keep audited accounts and to publish them, for example on their websites.
When the Bill was originally drafted, it was thought that we could rely upon certain provisions of the Companies Act 2006 so that an insolvency practitioner could file documents required by the court as part of any insolvency procedure, including education administration. However, it is now clear that specific provision is needed within the Bill to ensure that an
accessible and workable file for insolvent FE bodies may be created and managed by the registrar. This amendment therefore creates a new clause to provide for exactly that and allows the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to the delivery of documents about the insolvency of FE bodies to the registrar, about the registrar’s function of keeping records of information within those documents and about the publication of and public access to such records or information.
The power in the new clause also allows the Secretary of State to permit the Registrar of Companies to make rules relating to filing requirements, such as about the form of documents to be filed. As I hope the Committee will appreciate, this amendment is necessary to permit the paperwork of an insolvency procedure for an FE body to be properly managed. I beg to move that this amendment is accepted and that the new clause stand part of the Bill.