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Companies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I regret that I clearly misunderstood the noble Lord, although I said what I thought I had heard him say. What we have here is essential. It is of great importance that business management and company decision-makers not only gather information to understand and improve the impacts of their operation in all the fields in which they work but that their thinking and decision-making, and the evidence on which they make their judgments should be available to those whose proper responsibility it is to scrutinise those decisions in company reports and similar places. The effect of the amendment should be—and this is my concern about Amendment No. 245B and still more about Amendment No. 245C—that shareholders and others will have access to the important information about impacts and risks down the supply chains of the companies they invest in. It is most important that this kind of reporting is not an option—not something that directors should have regard to but which is required of them. Since supply chain management is essentially about relationships, it is important that the reporting in a business review demonstrates that companies hear and respond to their suppliers’ perspectives. It is especially important—granted it is my own sense—that a responsible company is one which really takes as much interest in, for instance, the health and safety questions that surround its operations in countries outside the legislative framework of this provision, as it is by law bound to do in relation to its operations of this company. I think, for instance, of the range of operations carried out by UK and international companies in conflict or post-conflict countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is of enormous importance that UK companies should be transparent and give their shareholders and others an opportunity to understand the character of their operations in such countries. That is especially important when—not just in my judgment but in the judgment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region and Genocide Prevention, of which I am a member, and of other organisations such as RAID—the Government are slow on the vital question of strengthening the activities of the UK contact point under the OECD guidelines. It is of great importance that the public interest, for instance, includes that kind of a public interest. That is why I am glad those words are in Amendment No. 245B. But I do not want them to be whittled away. So, as regards Amendment No. 245, it is most important that this provision should be in the Bill. I am concerned, as was the noble Baroness, about the implications of Amendment No. 245B and some of the first line of Amendment No. 245A. I want to be assured that that is not—as the noble Baroness asked—a Trojan horse. I do not want that to be a weakening of the provision—and it is important that it should not be. I share the noble Baroness's concerns about Amendment No. 245C, which I also wish to oppose. I welcome Amendment No. 245D because it would give the opportunity to set out a proper framework within which this reporting should take place. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, for tabling it. In conclusion, it seemed to me that perhaps I or one of my colleagues ought to have a conversation with the noble Lord in order to add to his bank of biblical quotations because we have heard the same one twice today.