Part of Enterprise Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:15 pm on 14 May 2002.
Nigel Waterson
Conservative, Eastbourne
5:15,
14 May 2002
I would like to come back on a couple of the Under-Secretary's points. What she said was very helpful but it is worth noting in passing that this is yet another new responsibility for the official receiver. I hope that the Committee will take as read the point about resources to which we keep returning.
There is the further issue of stigma. As I said in the original debate on that point, one of the main attractions of the IVA route is that it does not have the stigma of bankruptcy, and the Under-Secretary has confirmed that. I do not know whether she will be dealing with this later but, given the new arrangements for bankruptcy and bankruptcy restrictions orders, I am curious to know what the professions are going to do about stigma. Will they align their position with that of justices of the peace and Members of Parliament? We may be able to deal with that when we get to the relevant clauses, but I am curious—I could have found out about the issue before this afternoon's sitting, if I had thought about it—as to how that will work. If we analysed figures on those who have taken the IVA route, we would find that a high proportion of them wanted to avoid the stigma of bankruptcy. That probably means that they are professionals of some sort.
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