Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the Minister will appreciate, and as noble Lords will realise, during our deliberations in the Moses Room the Liberal Democrat Opposition joined the Conservative Opposition, and sometimes they joined us, on a number of technical amendments to the Bill. Certainly, the Government’s response today indicates that many of the points that we made have been taken on board and amendments have subsequently been proposed. However, on the amendment that we are discussing, we find ourselves oceans apart from the noble Lords, Lord Freeman and Lord Hodgson. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, said that the Conservatives do not disagree with the concept of enlightened shareholder value but then made a speech which demonstrated that he regards enlightened shareholder value as an issue for probably the year 3000 rather than 2006. His amendment would take company law back to what it probably was in 1862 or 1948. However, my noble friend Lord Sharman does not even think that the amendment and the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, reflect what modern company law is. He thinks that a lot of the issues that are reflected in the Government’s proposals already exist in common law in relation to directors’ duties and that the world has moved on significantly. There is an issue here. In a way, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for moving the amendment, because it enables us to delineate clearly where some of us stand on this issue. We have had some extremely helpful proposals from various NGOs on how the law should be amended to take on board environmental issues in relation to directors’ duties. I am very grateful for the work that those NGOs have done. The Government are trying to steer a path between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, they do not want to cause damage in relation to directors’ responsibilities and restrict the number of people who are prepared to take on the director role. They do not want to happen in this country what happened in America following the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which led to people not wanting to become directors of American companies. On the other hand, the Government are trying to meet the concerns of the NGOs. I refer to Amendment No. 79 in that regard. I suspect that the Government are getting close to a satisfactory resolution of the issue. They are meeting a lot of the points that the NGOs are making. Whether they are quite there yet remains to be seen. Of course, there is always the opportunity for Members of another place to discuss the matter. As I have said, Members of another place are renowned for their expertise and erudition on these technical Bills. The real point here is that we cannot go back to the law as it used to be. We do not often make political points in this House, but if the Tories really—