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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. A210B:"Page 361, line 4, leave out ““the county court”” and insert ““(subject to subsection (3)) a county court””" The noble Lord said: At present, if one wants to know what is meant by ““the court”” in the Companies Act 1985, one has to refer to various sections of the Insolvency Act 1986. We may not be offering all that noble Lords and other stakeholders would like by way of consolidation in this Bill, but we feel we can do a bit better than that. In future, Clause 758 will define ““the court”” for the purposes of all the Companies Acts. However, as it stands, the clause does not provide the flexibility that the Lord Chancellor currently has to exclude certain county courts from hearing Companies Act matters. Since not every county court can deal effectively with Companies Act matters, it is important to preserve this flexibility and that is what these amendments do. I beg to move.