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Companies Bill [Lords]

I shall be brief, and shall refer only to amendment No. 790, which the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) mentioned, and new clause 89, which I tabled with my hon. Friends and which takes exactly the opposite direction from his amendment. Our view, at least on formation, is that companies should be allowed to entrench provisions. We would allow them to set up an organisation in which people had certain rights that only the court could take away, and which could not be removed even by agreement of all the members. There is no ideological difference between the hon. Gentleman and me. We simply have a different perspective on what the law is for. Some lawyers think that their job is to create new organisations and institutions for people, and to do so in the way that their client wants. That is largely my view—the law should allow such institutions to be created according to the wishes of the people setting them up. The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) view the law from the opposite perspective, and are concerned with legal professionals who think that it is their job to sort out problems that have been set up by lawyers for other people. There is conflict in the law between those who create and those who dismantle, and I am in favour of the creation lobby, not the dismantling lobby. I urge the Government to choose our way forward rather than theirs, although I suspect that they may stick with their middle way.