Policy Impact Workshop: Review of the Personal Insolvency Framework

10 February 2023

UK Government Review of the Personal Insolvency Framework: LSE Law School Policy Impact Workshop 

The UK Government is currently undertaking the most significant review of personal insolvency policy in forty years. As part of this project, the Insolvency Service is currently in the process of analysing stakeholder responses to a Call for Evidence published in July 2022. Dr Joseph Spooner contributed expertise during the development of this Call for Evidence, including providing research content and chairing a thematic working group of relevant stakeholders. The Call for Evidence also referenced Dr Spooner’s book, Bankruptcy: the Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

To contribute further to the policy process, Dr Spooner organised a Policy Impact Workshop in the LSE Law School on March 29th 2023. Here, global experts from a range of countries presented research findings to a policy team from the UK Insolvency Service. The aim of the workshop was to contribute to the Insolvency Service’s evidence-gathering process by offering insight from empirical research into the operation of personal insolvency/bankruptcy laws in a number of international jurisdictions. Speakers, and the topics on which they presented, included the following: 

Prof. Pamela Foohey, Cardozo School of Law, New York

The Consumer Bankruptcy Project and Portraits of Bankruptcy Filers

Prof Saul Schwartz, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa;  

Prof Stephanie Ben-Ishai, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto

Predicting the Success or Failure of Consumer Proposals in Canada

Prof Iain Ramsay, Kent Law School

Changing Institutional Contexts of Personal Insolvency Law and the Politics of Personal Insolvency Reform

Dr Katharina Moser, Birmingham Law School

European personal insolvency law update: Germany

Dr Lucinda O’Brien, Melbourne Law School

An empirical study of the personal insolvency system: major findings and latest insights from Australia