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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

With the greatest respect to the Minister, I listened to his remarks with increasing incredulity. We are not in any way talking about failures of the registrar when he is given wrong information. That is expressly excluded from my amendment. We are saying simply that, when a person is negligent and another person suffers loss as a result, it is wholly reasonable that that person be indemnified. That is what this amendment says. As for the argument that there are many millions of transactions, many millions of audits are carried out every year and very few of them fail. That does not remove the liability from auditors. Many millions of directors are involved in many millions of transactions, but that does not remove the liability from them. I do not find the Minister’s remarks convincing. Nevertheless, I shall not pursue the matter at this point in time but will come back—