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Debt Advice and Debt Management

I do not. I think that cold calling is a terrible idea, but I have good news for the hon. Gentleman: cold calling will die out automatically if all debt management companies follow the fair-shares model. There is not sufficient revenue available from the creditors to fund any of those dodgy marketing practices. That is why CCCS and Payplan do not indulge in those practices. To some extent, we are not here to save one commercial company and not another one, but they do not do so because their fair-share payments from the creditors do not make that possible. It is only because the fee-charging companies charge such huge up-front fees to consumers that they can afford to spend all that money to get them in in the first place. The good news is that those bad practices would die out. On the other hand, we would have to something else: we could not just require debt management companies to operate on that model. We would have to require creditors to make it available to all debt management companies, because none of us is in the business of somehow skewing the market towards one or two providers. We would have to require the creditors to offer that to any company that passed the basic regulatory requirements. I understand that that would be a big step for any Government. The good news is that the legislation is already in place. The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 is already on the statute book. Part 5, which envisaged setting up regulations for debt management advice, has never been activated, because a commencement order has not been laid. My final suggestion to the Minister is that the Government should bite the bullet and lay that commencement order. They should introduce a simple regulation to enable strong, competitive and profitable commercial providers of debt management advice to flourish by offering advice funded by fair shares from creditors, thereby ensuring that the interests of some of the most vulnerable in our society at some of the most worrying times in their life are protected.