Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I briefly return to the issue of independent contractors, which has now been raised by several speakers. When winding up on government Amendment No. 196, the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, said that to try to bring into the directors’ reporting requirement people who were not employees was too far and too complicated for the companies. I perfectly understand the gist of what the Minister is saying; I am a director of several companies myself. No one is trying to throttle the poor old companies and prevent them from doing their work. However, he will agree—this cannot be contentious—that when one is dealing with certain third-world countries, there are no employees according to local law. They are not employees; they are independent piece workers. Dare I say that some companies trade off that? They may not employ more than a single employee in the country concerned, and that person will be an expatriate. I therefore ask whether the Government will at least think about this. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, said that Amendment No. 194B added nothing substantial to the government new Clause 395(5), but I think that he will agree that paragraph (iii) of Amendment No. 194B attempts to get at the difficult issue of contractors of companies working in overseas countries. There may be a way of dealing with this practically by indicating, obviously at the last stage of the Bill, that ““employees”” in the Government’s amendment means ““employees”” as defined by UK law. I do not think that that would place a burden on companies at all, because the Government’s intention is that employees, as we understand the term, are to come under the reporting requirements of the directors.