Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 271:"Page 206, line 37, leave out ““private””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, here we come to the first of a series of amendments to Chapter 12 of Part 15 and to Chapter 1 of Part 22. These amendments concern the use of confidential information and in general seek to establish that proper restraints are in place on the use of confidential information. There is a balance to be struck between the needs of effective government on behalf of citizens as a whole and the rights of individuals and businesses, and I do not pretend that getting it right is easy. But the role of your Lordships’ House is to challenge legislation when it takes rights away—in this case, the right to have confidential information kept that way. With those introductory remarks, I turn to Amendment No. 271, which would delete the word ““private”” from Clause 443(1). The clause relates to information obtained by the Financial Reporting Review Panel and provides restrictions on what may be done with information relating to the private affairs of an individual. Clause 630 is in similar form, but applies to the Takeover Panel; Amendment No. 450 seeks to delete the word ““private”” from that clause. These are probing amendments. So far as I can ascertain, no definition of the word ““private”” is given in the Bill, and it is important to be precise about it because private information is protected in some measure by Clause 443, but non-private information is not. I invite the Minister to tell us what private information means for these two clauses, and I hope that he will give examples of information that is both private and non-private. I beg to move.