Tim Lance, sales and finance director, X1 "Pre-packs should be stopped and I don’t think any amount of legislation will help change that. There are companies that are happy to pre-pack but to me it’s morally wrong. Some argue that requiring a different insolvency practitioner to be appointed to the one that consulted with the company prior to it becoming insolvent could help, but I don’t think it will – there are always loopholes. The same applies if you ban the original owners from rebuying the business. A friend or family member could come into the frame, so where do you stop? The only way to crack down on pre-pack deals is by banning them altogether."

Sidney Bobb, chairman, BAPC "I’m not sure how much difference it will make to our members. We get two main areas of complaints from the, mainly small, businesses we represent. The first is from creditors hit by these pre-pack firms, and the second from contemporaries and competing companies. They say pre-pack businesses have an unfair advantage and that simply brings prices down to an uneconomic level, which has been proved by the number of pre-packs which fail. Our members find this new legislation most daunting; they see it as more hard-to-understand red tape – they are busy trying to make a living, which can be frustrating enough."

Bryn Oakley, Partner, Astra Printing Group "The government proposals will go only some way to sharpen up the pre-pack process. So many contributors to your many blogs on this subject have pointed out if nothing changes after a pre-pack and a new financial model is not properly drawn up, then the ‘newco’ will simply fail again. The government should introduce a condition for pre-packs where a workable, sustainable financial model should be shown to creditors for approval, with a partial debt carry-over that would at least repay part of the previous debt of the ‘oldco’ back to the creditors over a fixed period of time."