Insolvency

Mr. Hunt
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many individuals were declared insolvent in each of the last five years; and how many have been registered as insolvent in the current financial year.

Mr. McFadden
The following table records the total number of individual insolvencies in each financial year since 2003-04 in England and Wales.

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|Financial year                                                                                                                                                      |Individual insolvencies1 in England and Wales|
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|2003-04                                                                                                                                                             |37,843                                       |
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|2004-05                                                                                                                                                             |49,175                                       |
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|2005-06                                                                                                                                                             |78,333                                       |
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|2006-07                                                                                                                                                             |112,585                                      |
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|2007-08                                                                                                                                                             |102,028                                      |
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|2008-092                                                                                                                                                            |53,454                                       |
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|1 Including bankruptcy orders and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs).2 Insolvency data for the current financial year are only available up to September 2008.|                                             |
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