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Companies Bill [Lords]

As the Minister and the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) have said, Lords amendment No. 245A has a fairly long history. The original operating and financial review proposal included provisions referring to the supply chain in virtually the same words as those in the Government’s amendment. As people in business pointed out, the difficulty with that amendment—although we welcomed it in principle as something that we had called for—was that it left businesses in a state of some uncertainty about precisely what they had to reveal. The solution proposed by our party in the House of Lords was rather different from that proposed by the hon. Member for Huntingdon, but it suffered the same fate. We suggested going further along the line of laying down, via reporting standards, exactly what was expected of business. We believed that that would resolve all the problems identified by the hon. Member for Huntingdon. Regrettably, the Government rejected our suggestion for a reason often repeated during our debates on this matter—that it would lead to a tick-box mentality. Our view was ““Better a tick-box so that people know what they are supposed to do than a vague and difficult position for businesses to cope with””. Nevertheless, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon said, the Government made a welcome concession on the supply chain. Then, because of issues raised by the Minister—including the possible emerging of information that would be detrimental to individuals faced with circumstances such as that involving Huntingdon Life Sciences—they were persuaded to table a further amendment tightening the original arrangement slightly. I am not entirely convinced that that ““tightening”” amendment is necessary, for the simple reason that information released by a company is ultimately a matter for the directors: it is for them to decide what is material. We feel, however, that the Lords amendments would bring some comfort to the businesses concerned, and as both the hon. Member for Huntingdon and I raised the issue several times in Committee and on Report, it would be excessively churlish of us to take a different view tonight. Therefore, like the hon. Gentleman, I have no objections to the amendments.