§ Mr. Simon HughesTo ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the number of companies which have gone bankrupt in each local authority in England and Wales in each year since 1987.
Mr. Neil HamptonThere are two types of company insolvencies: compulsory liquidations and creditors' voluntary liquidations. No geographical information on creditors' voluntary liquidations is available. For compulsory liquidations the only geographical information available is by the court in which the order was made. This is not a good basis for analysing company location, since many cases in England and Wales are dealt with in London regardless of the company's location, and work may be moved between courts according to differing workloads.