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Farepak

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. Although my constituent has been incredibly tenacious, from her point of view it has been very difficult to get any information out of the administrators, apart from messages posted on the website. The average amount of time taken for a liquidation process to finish is about two and a half years, so we can completely understand the sheer anger, frustration and, frankly, scepticism of the ex-customers of Farepak over the administrator BDO and its motives. Could this ever happen again? Following the collapse of Farepak, the Christmas Prepayment Association was set up. On the face of it, the guidelines issued by the CPA seem to remedy many of the issues that arose. However, the association has a major flaw: it is self-regulating. Conceivably, a Christmas hamper company could be set up tomorrow and not be required to follow the CPA guidelines. This is surely not acceptable, given what has happened.