Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps his Department is taking to tackle companies that provide misleading and fraudulent Individual Voluntary Arrangements.

The Financial Conduct Authority recently took action to ban providers of debt advice from receiving payments in exchange for referring debtors to Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) providers. In addition, the Insolvency Service introduced new regulatory guidance to the insolvency profession in relation to the take up of new IVAs.

The Government has announced that it will further strengthen the regulatory regime by introducing new legislation to regulate firms providing insolvency services, in addition to individual insolvency practitioners, which will include companies providing IVA solutions.