Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 212:"Page 188, line 20, leave out from first ““the”” to end of line 22 and insert ““end of the fourth financial year of the company following the year to which the report and accounts apply””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 212 I shall speak also to Amendment No. 213. These amendments were suggested to us by the UK Shareholders Association. The Government have, wisely in our view, introduced a requirement for quoted companies to publish certain information on their websites. The vast majority of companies already include their annual accounts and preliminary announcements on their websites. We do not believe that the requirements of Clauses 411 and 412 will cause difficulty for companies. I seek for that to be taken just a bit further in these two amendments. Amendment No. 212 requires five years of annual accounts rather than one, and Amendment No. 213 requires all other communications to shareholders—and, importantly, market announcements such as trading and interim statements, directors changes and so on—to be included on the website. When we debated the equivalent of Amendment No. 212 in Grand Committee I was genuinely surprised to hear the Minister say that the Government thought it was fine for shareholders to have to go to Companies House, which is expensive in itself for some, to pay a £3 search fee and doubtless also some photocopying fees. Asking for a company to keep information on its website rather than remove it is virtually cost free. The benefits are so self-evident that we can only suspect that the Government are seeking to protect the income of Companies House rather than thinking of the needs of shareholders and others. We see websites as providing a store of information for shareholders and others and not simply as a communication device for current information. We accept that websites are a powerful tool with which to communicate current information to shareholders, which is why we have sought to build on the Government’s approach in Amendment No. 203 by adding some extra items which should be communicated more openly and rapidly to shareholders. The use of websites has transformed the potential for all shareholders, not just market professionals, to have access to significant volumes of data, both current and historical. It would be a great shame if we let the Bill go by without harnessing it to produce a bigger information revolution for shareholders than is currently envisaged by Clauses 411 and 412. I beg to move.