Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

As well as obliging a company to tell members about the possibility of a statement and preventing it charging the members for the cost of publication, Clause 514 deals with two consequences when a statement is published. First, the company must forward the statement to the auditor and, secondly, the statement becomes available for discussion at the accounts meeting. Frankly, that is as far as we want to go. In practice, we would expect the auditor to want to attend the meeting and we would expect the chairman to invite him to respond to the statement. Whether there was further discussion at the meeting would depend on the chairman’s judgment, but company law generally leaves it to the chairman to run a meeting as he sees fit. We are very reluctant to prescribe in statute whom he may allow or require to speak; nor are we keen to compel the auditor to attend and be available. If we went down that road, we would have to provide an offence for an auditor who missed the meeting or who attended and perhaps did not sufficiently answer the questions that were put to him. We may not always be in a situation such as Starred Questions, where Ministers always give complete, succinct, relevant and erudite answers to questions. That may not always happen in these circumstances. I am sure that what the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are aiming at with Amendment No. 334H is what should, and probably will, happen in practice, but I do not think that we should add it to the Bill.