Clause 104
Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Brooks Newmark (Braintree, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 173, in clause 104, page 89, line 31, after ‘persons’, insert
‘approved by the relevant supervisory authority’.
The introduction of approved debt management schemes is welcome, but only in so far as the supervisory and approval regime is sufficiently rigorous. Subsection (5) establishes that the scheme must be operated
“by a body of persons”.
I presume that the intention is to prevent individuals from offering schemes. Our amendment goes further and would require the supervisory authority to approve not only the scheme, but the body offering it. That matters because the schemes will in time be marketed as approved. They will receive the seal of approval from the Government and presumably use their new status to drum up business. There will be no surprise if existing individual voluntary arrangement providers offered their own debt management schemes for that very reason.
Encouraging providers to seek approval for their schemes may well be a pragmatic alternative to regulating the entire IVA sector, although there are legitimate concerns that the Government have missed an opportunity by not choosing to regulate. Whatever the intentions behind the clause, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that debt management schemes cannot be operated by individuals who are entirely unvetted by the supervisory authority. That would create a risk of unscrupulous providers operating one approved scheme, which they can market as such, among many others and thus leave the public to draw the inference that all their services have been given a Government kitemark. It is ultimately a matter of perception.
During the course of its investigation, prior to the approval of a scheme, the supervisory authority might look closely at the body offering it. In that case, nothing would be lost by the Bill stating explicitly that the provider, as well as the scheme itself, is approved. I therefore seek the Minister’s assurance on that point.