Baroness Lawlor (Con)

I support my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral’s amendment and have little to add to what he and my noble friend Lord Moynihan have said. I emphasise that we ought to support such amendments for reducing the levels of collective consultation for companies involved in insolvency proceedings. We should do so in the interest of reducing the escalating costs to a company as a result of compliance and protracted timing. I support these amendments for that reason. As we have heard, the Insolvency Act 1986 obliges the administrator to act in the best interests of the creditors. The more time and compliance are demanded of a company, the more it will cost and the less there will be for creditors. These costs will escalate under Clause 27 as drafted. As a result, the creditors will have less available to pay their bills and their employees. We will see a domino effect on companies left short of cash flow and on their ability to pay their bills and their employees. These amendments are very important, because we cannot afford a domino effect, with businesses left short of cash because of the compliance costs and protracted timings posed on companies facing insolvency proceedings. They are suffering anyway; their bills have not been paid. In the end, the less that is available to pay them, the worse the outcome will be for the whole economy, for employment levels as a whole and for the cost of living.