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Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One problem has been the cost of lawsuits, which is in part why the Government and other donors have set up a fund to enable developing countries to deal with some of the lawsuits that have arisen as a result of the vulture funds. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will want to say more about that. Furthermore, there is a real perception that there is no system—that it is all down to the courts and that there is no mechanism—whereas in fact although the measure is a Treasury Bill, it draws on existing international development procedures for the management of developing country debt. In previous discussions, we described the amount of public sector debt and noted that much of it has been written off. A total of about £4.5 billion was private sector debt. A lot of the debt has already been managed. The legislation would deal with the completely unreasonable creditors—the vulture funds, which involve people who operate outside the rules. There are already internationally recognised mechanisms to determine the value of debt. If the hon. Gentleman had been in the Chamber on Second Reading, he would have heard the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) claim from the Front Bench credit for his party for taking the lead on the management of developing country debt. On the Government Benches, we tried not to heckle or intervene when the hon. Gentleman took the credit, but there is no dispute about the fact that there are proper mechanisms. The only issue is to make sure that they apply to vulture funds, whose activities rightly outrage so many people not only in the UK but across the world. The hon. Member for Gainsborough asked about the provision on the duration of the Act. The amendment was included at the behest of Conservative Front Benchers. It was a sunset clause for a year to give a new Parliament an opportunity to look again at the legislation, to make sure that we were not in Dangerous Dogs Act territory, where legislation was passed without scrutiny. There will be a chance to look at the detail and the working of the measure, so that it can pass into legislation. I hope that I have answered the hon. Gentleman's concerns.