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Overseas Companies Regulations 2009

I cannot see anything in the regulations to object to per se. Indeed, if my reading is correct, according to the Explanatory Memorandum, the majority of respondents to the consultation exercise agreed with what is being done here, although in line with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, in the previous debate, it would be interesting to know how big the minority was and what its major concerns were. My only question is on the regulatory impact assessment. I explained before in this Committee my scepticism of the figures put on costs and, in particular, the claimed benefits of certain regulations in RIAs. In the case of these regulations, the net benefit claimed is no less than £43,360,000. I have followed the calculations, which are based on a sweeping assumption that half the 7,847 overseas companies will be in a position to provide parent company accounts and the other half will not. A further assumption is made about the average costs for each of those categories of company. The whole of the annual saving so calculated is then, I think, subjected to a net present value calculation, which itself makes assumptions—for example, about the cost of capital—which must be, to put it mildly, fairly subjective in the current market. I do not disagree that it is helpful to have a regulatory impact assessment, but I wonder what value there is in a claim of benefit to corporate entities based on such huge assumptions. I wonder whether the Government have, in a wider context, given thought to improving the techniques followed for arriving at a cost-benefit analysis, or at least to giving an indication of the subjectivity.