Corporate Liquidations
Debate between Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord Leong(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, private equity plays an important role in business support in this country. We have seen private equity companies that have acquired businesses and actually grown them as well. Yes, their track record is not great, but there is definitely a role for private equity in business in this country. Do not listen to the Government. Listen to people in the private equity business. Jamie Dimon said:
“I’ve always been a believer in the UK’s … strengths as a place to do business and there’s much to like about the new government’s pro-growth agenda”.
Yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that the UK was in the “Goldilocks” zone with great universities, a good start-up culture and the third-largest amount of investment in AI companies globally outside the US and China.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in the 2024-25 financial year, the Insolvency Service disqualified more than 1,000 company directors? Of those, a significant proportion—736—were banned for abusing the Covid-19 Bounce Back Loan Scheme. Additionally, there were 131 individuals subject to bankruptcy restriction orders, with 87 of them also linked to the misuse of Covid-19 loans. How many businesses had to wind up because of those facts?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. Yes, those figures are quite high. It is right that the full force of the law should come down on company directors who are found to be trading insolvently. Basically, there are different forms of liquidation, from creditors’ voluntary liquidation to compulsory liquidation, which I mentioned earlier, which has increased mainly because of HMRC prosecution. HMRC, Companies House and insolvency practices target abuses such as tax evasion and this whole area of phoenixism with tougher enforcement, personal liability for directors and upfront tax demand. That should be the way.
Multilateral Free Trade
Debate between Lord Browne of Ladyton and Lord Leong
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, we on these Benches send our deepest condolences to Baroness Randerson’s friends and family.
The UK’s accession to the CPTPP takes a plurilateral Pacific deal and makes it a truly global one, bringing new opportunities for British businesses and supporting jobs across the country. The UK is the first country to accede to the CPTTP and the first European member of the CPTPP, demonstrating the Government’s commitment to multilateral trade. As far as the EU is concerned, the Prime Minister has stated many times that we are resetting our relationship with Europe. We want to ensure that our businesses have a much better working relationship with Europe. We will have to wait and see what happens from there.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, in the context of a dispute about subsidies between Airbus and Boeing, in 2019 the United States imposed a 25% tariff on single malt Scotch whisky, which was levied between October 2019 and March 2021. It cost the Scottish whisky industry £1 million of revenue a day. In total, £600 million in exports was lost to the United States. This was suspended in June 2021 for five years and is due to come in again in June 2026. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the Scottish whisky industry does not once again suffer collateral damage in a trade war that is not of its making?