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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My name and that of my noble friend Lord Razzall are attached to these two amendments. I will not, because I think my former business partner has been as eloquent as she always is, and certainly as persuasive, repeat everything that the noble Baroness has said, but I would like to touch on the practicalities of this issue. I deal with the issue almost every day in my business life—the issue of how you persuade a board of directors to be helpful, transparent and informative while putting themselves on the line. Whenever you talk about forward-looking information, the first thing the company lawyers say is, ““Don’t say it. You are better off not saying anything, or you are better off making an anodyne statement than putting something on the line””. That is what we want to avoid. We want companies to put forward-looking data in these business reviews. We want them to be as transparent as they possibly can. I echo what the noble Baroness has said about the US arrangements. They are a nightmare. If you ever have the time, and some of us actually have to do it, you should read what is called a 20F registration statement. When you go through the risks and the disclaimers and God knows what else that is in there, you simply cannot distil from it anything meaningful. So I strongly support the notion of a safe harbour provision. As I think is generally known by the Members of the Committee who have been sitting here listening to me banging on about this, I also support the notion that we should retain the OFR. So, like the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, if that were to be retained, I would like to see this sort of provision in that as well.