Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, may I take this opportunity to raise a rather more general point? The Minister has already said to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, ““I hope you will withdraw that amendment so that we can come back to it at the next stage””. The next stage will be Third Reading, and according to the Companion there are restrictions on the amendments that can be moved at Third Reading. The Companion provides:"““The principal purposes of amendments on third reading are . . . to clarify any remaining uncertainties . . . to improve the drafting; and . . . to enable the government to fulfil undertakings””." If the results of the Minister’s deliberations are that the Government are going to give way to the proposal in substance made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and they bring forward an amendment, they will be fulfilling an undertaking. If, unfortunately, an impasse remains, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, wants to bring it back, technically he would be somewhat outside that paragraph of the Companion. Many people have made the point that those rules in the Companion are very difficult to apply to a Bill that has been in Grand Committee, and particularly to a Bill as complicated as this one that has been in Grand Committee. Are all on the Front Benches tacitly agreeing that no one will invoke that provision of the Companion to defeat very sensible attempts by the Minister to resolve things by agreement, and that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will not find that if he accepts the Minister’s overtures he is then stymied on a subsequent occasion?