Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name, Amendment No. 114. It is a probing amendment. However, I associate myself entirely with what my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding has just said. I had the advantage of visiting Companies House—I am grateful to both officials and Ministers for permitting that—to look at the problem in practical ways. I have only two comments. Removing evidence of the current address filed by a director for other directorships—what my noble friend Lord Jenkin is getting at—is, I am afraid, not as easy as it might seem at first blush. It goes beyond electronic records. They are on microfiche and paper records which is why I have acknowledged from the word go that any powers that the registrar might have on direction or on application would realistically have to be treated with a degree of discretion so that we do not end up having to go back over tens of thousands of records dating back 30 years. That would be an expensive exercise. However, I agree with my noble friend that there are special circumstances—particularly when there is a terrorist threat to a director who is thinking of becoming a director of a sensitive company and therefore makes an application for a protected address—for the same protection to be extended to all the other filings in Companies House disclosing his present address. I very much welcome what the Government have done in deciding to introduce an amendment to Part 26. I, like my noble friend Lord Jenkin, look forward very much to that happening. I will not move Amendment No. 114.