Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate his Department has made of the saving to the public purse made by removing the provision for insolvency practitioners to call a physical creditor meeting.

The savings to creditors identified in the first year from removal of the requirement to hold a meeting and abolition of final meetings in liquidations and bankruptcies where the official receiver is not the office holder, are estimated to be at least £9.2m (comprised of £2.9m for removal of requirement for meetings and £6.3m for abolition of final meetings).

We have not sought to quantify the savings to the public purse, such as the specific benefit to HMRC as a creditor. We have however estimated that around 10% of creditors are not businesses, so approximately £0.9m of savings can be attributed to such creditors as Crown departments, employees and customers for deposits.

The savings figures are based on 2013 costs.