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Companies Bill [Lords]

I do not want to detain the House by going through the amendments one by one. I am happy to go along with the approach proposed by the Government, but I would not want to go too far down the line on which have started because of the underlying reason why the regulations were set out in the first place. It is difficult for directors to borrow money from their companies because it is important to maintain the separateness of the fund that a company holds from its directors. That gives rise to a protection, not so much for shareholders, but for creditors, so that they can be assured that a company’s assets are as they appear, rather than having been dissipated by being loaned out to people with a direct interest in the company. The deregulation of quasi-loans and credit transactions is not unobjectionable, but I would not like to give the impression that we would be happy to take a deregulatory route all the way down the line in this area. I will be interested to hear the argument of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) for amendment No. 757. I suspect that this is not the right time to discuss the consultation of employees and the wider question of industrial democracy, but he has a good point. We are in an era in which employees face increased precariousness in their employment experience, given that more and more people are in temporary or part-time employment—employment that is not a traditional permanent job. It is thus not helpful for directors to give themselves long contracts that amount to a tenure. At the very least, companies should think about the consequences for industrial relations and human relations of doing such a thing without first talking to their employees.