Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Vaux of Harrowden and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Report stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, we have discussed this concept of disclosure at earlier stages. Of course, if a person does not want anything disclosed, they could become a sole trader or a limited liability partnership or a partnership, in which case very little, if anything, needs to be disclosed. My question and concern is just to understand the approach that government will take to this. Is it the intention just to give a blanket exemption for, perhaps, companies in defence or companies with complicated IP or companies in sensitive sectors? Is it to respond to those who make the request generally in the affirmative or to ask further questions to determine why a company should be exempted from disclosure? If a company simply asks to be exempted because it does not want its competitors to know, will that open the floodgate to everybody to do the same? I am not sure that “because we don’t want our competitors to know” is a particularly good reason, to be honest. I am therefore a little nervous about this clause, particularly because it is a bit vague. It just talks about regulations, and Section 1292 of the Companies Act 2006 is just an empowering section on regulations. We are opening the door very wide, and I hope that the Minister, in due course, will be able to give us some very clear guidance on what the Government have in mind.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, may I very briefly support what the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, has just said? This amendment troubles me a little bit. The Companies House information is important for people who are dealing with those companies, be they suppliers or customers. When we were doing the inquiry into digital fraud for the committee on digital fraud, we met a range of fraud victims. For those where it was relevant, what was interesting was that every single one of the people whom we met, before they parted with their money, had gone to Companies House and had a look at the company. They took comfort from that and lost their money. The information there is important, and reducing the amount of information on it should be done only with real thought and consideration.

I get it that in certain circumstances it makes sense for companies to be able to apply that certain information should not be made available—there are plenty of situations where one could think that makes sense. However, this amendment goes a lot further than that. It gives the Government the power to make regulations to allow micro and small companies to make all or parts of their accounts public on application or otherwise. In theory, therefore, those regulations could simply say that no micro or small entity needs to publish anything. That would be going far too far, so it would be good to understand from the Minister what is actually intended here.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Vaux of Harrowden and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

As a fellow chartered accountant, can I ask the noble Lord how his amendment would work in respect of trust? Does it mean that trustees are disclosed or that beneficiaries are disclosed? Clearly, one would want to have beneficiaries disclosed, and I am not sure that this achieves that.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

The noble Lord is quite right. What we are really trying to get to here is the ultimate beneficial owner, which is a problem that sits throughout this and the overseas property register. Neither of them really gets to that point. The wording requires refinement, but that is what I was trying to get to—that the ultimate beneficial owner, the directing mind behind the shareholding, is disclosed.