Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, one should be properly cautious when rising from one’s place to intervene if one has not been present at a Grand Committee, where complex issues such as this one were discussed fully. However, I have spoken in other parts of your Lordships’ proceedings, and while I plead guilty to not having been present in Grand Committee when this issue was debated, I rise in strong support of what my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts has just said. Governments of both political colours—not only the present Government, but earlier Conservative Administrations—have been accused, sometimes rightly, of going too far down the road of fulfilling what they see as the outcomes desired by an EU directive, or—to use the excellent phrase of my noble friend—of gold-plating. That is not desirable in this case. We now have far too many new potential criminal offences being introduced, hand over hand, in this country. I do not speak of the 43 criminal justice Acts we have seen in the last nine years. One should proceed very cautiously before bringing into law new potential criminal offences which may never be used, may frighten practitioners, and may lie unnoticed on the statute book. That is not good legislation. My noble friend has put his finger on it: we should leave it to the panel. If other European jurisdictions can manage perfectly well without going this far, why on earth should this Administration go to the lengths of gratuitously introducing new and unnecessary criminal offences?