Baroness Kramer (LD)

My Lords, the amendments that underlie Motions A and B that came from the House of Lords were in the name of my colleague and noble friend Lord Scriven. On his behalf, and on behalf of my Benches, we recognise that we have come to end the of the road on this Bill and we will not press for any further amendments. I will make a couple of comments. I have just come from a fairly extensive meeting with R3, the insolvency and restructuring professionals’ body. Those around the table were telling me of the cascade of small businesses that are already going into voluntary insolvency because of the increasing costs that they face this April. When the Minister says that he will look at evaluating the Bill and its impacts, I hope he will make sure that his view casts across that territory, because it is obviously fundamental to the agenda for growth. Within those discussions, of course, were many private social care providers. A number of the smaller ones—at least three of the practitioners around the table—were dealing with insolvencies triggered over the last few weeks. From what the Minister said, I hope that he and his Government will recognise that they now need to use other means to step in and shore up the key sectors that are faced with costs they cannot sustain and are therefore closing services which we absolutely need. I hope very much that his commitment to ongoing evaluation will incorporate all of that and be granular—we were hopeful when we heard his words on SEND transport, because that is quite a granular issue—rather than the overarching kind that we have been dealing with in this House. However, the Minister has always been gracious. I understand that this has been exceedingly difficult and that the Government face very difficult and strenuous times. We recognise that, at this point, we can take this Bill no farther. We thank everyone who has participated, from all Benches, and all the people in our back offices and Whips’ offices who have provided so much support.