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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

At the moment, under the Bill, except in quite narrowly defined circumstances, it would be possible only for the registrar to remove information from the register where there is a court order requiring her to do so. The Bill introduces useful clarity on when the registrar can remove information, but I accept that the result is still that a company will need to go to court when it wants to see the removal of what it feels is false information. In general terms, that is right. Important issues are at stake when the register is amended, since registration of information will often have had a direct legal effect. The register is a public source of information and third parties will often, in complete good faith, have taken decisions and actions on the basis of the information which they see displayed on it. That said, I admit that I have some sympathy with the suggestion that there may be circumstances where manifestly false information has been published, and where, for the company and third parties, it would be helpful to have a quicker route to rectification than is provided by the court. I am not sure that it will be easy to frame the circumstances in which this should be possible: it is important that we should be in a position to set them out transparently and unambiguously if we are to go down this route. I do not, for example, think that a non-court process could work if it were to rely on the discretion of the registrar, given the risk of inconsistency and uncertainty that this would introduce. Any cases requiring the exercise of judgment should surely remain a matter for the courts. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his input and thinking on how that might be addressed. But I am certainly happy to take the question away, without commitment at this stage, to see if there is a way forward on this matter.