Companies: Online AGMs

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

All noble Lords and the noble Baroness have raised the importance of AGMs. They are incredibly important. They are important for engaging shareholders, large and small, but particularly, as has been mentioned, those who perhaps do not have an institutional voice. We are engaging with investors and the shareholder representative organisations on what the shareholder safeguards should be, so that will be taken into account in the consultation.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, one of this country’s greatest strengths is our financial services sector and yet many of our firms face unnecessary regulatory and administrative burdens that make it so much harder to focus on their primary duty, which is to shareholders. In the light of the Government’s commitment to cut regulation by 25%, and given those additional pressures that businesses already face from higher employment costs and growing compliance demands, will the Government now set out what specific steps they will take to reduce the regulatory burden on financial services so that this vital and growing sector can deliver better value for shareholders, attracting investment and economic growth?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

As the noble Lord mentioned, getting the right regulation and reducing the administrative costs is a priority for the Government and in many areas we have already taken action to do that; for example, we no longer require certain companies to produce a strategic report. We will continue to work through the sectors and across all companies on reducing those administrative costs.