Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 217:"Page 189, line 42, at end insert—" ““(   )   A demand for the purposes of this section must be made in writing and may be delivered to the company by any generally available method, including electronic methods.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 217, which would amend Clause 414, I speak also to Amendment No. 220, which is identical and would amend Clause 415. The clauses concern the rights of members and debenture holders to demand copies of the accounts of quoted and unquoted companies respectively. The amendments would clarify that a request must be in writing. When we debated these amendments in Committee, the Minister said that there should be no reason why a simple telephone request should not be allowed for such requests for documents. That seems entirely reasonable in today’s world of modern telecommunications, until one marries that informality—this is like so much of the Bill—with the fact that the company’s requirement to send copies of its accounts and reports is accompanied by its very own criminal offence. The clauses also, of course, impose costs on companies, especially smaller ones that do not have large print-runs of their accounts to keep in stock. That is why I continue to believe that, in the interests of clarity between members and the company, it would be right for there to be some formality in the request if non-compliance with the request will trigger a criminal prosecution. If this is not the case, it will, in effect, impose on companies a requirement to introduce telephone call-monitoring systems. That might be appropriate for the largest companies, but I do not believe that it would be appropriate for the hundreds of thousands of smaller companies which also fall within the clauses. I beg to move.