Interserve

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

There is no reason why trade creditors of Interserve should lose any money. The hit was taken by the shareholders and the lenders who wrote off their debt and converted it into equity. The subsidiary companies providing goods and services to the public and private sectors are wholly unaffected by what has happened to the parent company, which has simply changed ownership. The creditors of the subsidiary companies are in exactly the same position as they were before the transaction over the weekend.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I will pick up that issue. This is a pre-pack administration, is it not? In a pre-pack, the people who lose out are the trade creditors and the people who survive are the owners of the original company, who walk away with a new company unencumbered by the debts its previous creditors allowed. How can the Minister defend that? As my noble friend said, this involves thousands of SMEs, which will lose jobs and supply of cash, and be worse off. The Government reviewed this whole process in 2014. They accepted the recommendation of the Graham review to take powers in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 to make sure that pre-packs were properly regulated. What is the progress on that?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the first point, it is important to understand that Interserve was in two halves. The subsidiary companies provided services to the public and private sectors, looking outwards towards the market, whereas the parent company looked backwards at the shareholders and the banks that were lending it money. What happened over the weekend was that the parent company went into administration and immediately, as the noble Lord said, went into a pre-pack and is now owned, in effect, by the lenders. It is the banks of those lenders, not the trade creditors, which are out of pocket as a result of the transaction.

I will write to the noble Lord on the second question, because it affects another department.