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Companies Bill [Lords]

We are making heavy weather of a straightforward issue, although it was fascinating and quite a spectacle to see the Lib Dem spokesman, the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), struggling to maintain a foot in both camps, in his usual fashion and in his lawyerly way. However, the issue is clear cut and we should not accept new clauses 16 and 17 because they conflict with something quite basic, which is access to information, openness and full accountability. I, of course, have every sympathy with the shareholders of Huntingdon Life Sciences who were threatened, but to introduce such a complicated arrangement would mean invoking a sledgehammer to crack a few nuts, because those people were being persecuted by lunatics—there is no other word for them. There is no way to protect everybody who might be threatened by such lunacy and no reason in relation to such a threat to invoke secrecy of the kind that would be invoked by new clauses 16 and 17. An important principle of openness would be breached just to avert a few much exaggerated—although I am sure painful for the shareholders—incidents. We should oppose these proposals, and in doing so I commend my amendments Nos. 758 and 683, which run in the direction of openness and against the spirit of the new clauses.