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Finance (No. 3) Bill

I think that is an excellent suggestion, but there also have to be appointments available when people need them. It is no use searching for citizens advice bureaux if appointments are not available for six to eight weeks because funding to provide the very specialist advice that is needed has dried up. We have to make sure, first, that people get information about where they can go, and, secondly, that appointments are available. Regulation of debt management companies is needed. They come at the top of Google and other search engines on the basis that they will be going out of business in two years' time anyway, so they might as well make as much money as possible by charging up-front fees and charging as much as they can. If they do go bust, as two have recently, it does not really matter to them. I had a client come to me who had been paying £40 a month to a debt management agency for 18 months, at the end of which he owed his creditors more than when he had started. Those companies need to be regulated. The new clause is one of the range of measures we need. We have to keep this issue high on the agenda because the longer we leave it, the more people will go to high-cost lenders and debt management companies and the more people will get themselves into a spiral of unaffordable debt. We have to act now. It is no use leaving this for another five or six months—how many thousands more will have got themselves into debt in that time?