Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many exemptions have been made under the people with significant control register; and for what reasons those exemptions have been made.

As at 30 April 2019, 836 live companies were exempt from the requirements to file information about their People with Significant Control. This is because they are subject to other disclosure requirements due to their voting shares being admitted to trading on a regulated market in the UK or EEA, or on markets listed in Schedule 1 to the Register of People with Significant Control Regulations 2016.

Exemptions can also be granted in very limited circumstances, in the interests of national security, the economic wellbeing of the UK, or in the support or prevention or detection of serious crime. I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made on 26 January 2016, HCWS488, which set out the circumstances in which such exemptions would be granted.