Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am happy to respond to that invitation. I meant that we could have said, ““We need a criminal offence, so we will make it one that is committed not only where someone acts in a sharp, deliberate way to break the rules, or is reckless, but if someone breaks the rules through negligence””. Someone could be careless and put forward an offer document which does not comply. We could even have said that people are guilty of criminal offences where there is no fault but they have broken the rule. It happens from time to time and we call those offences of strict liability. We could have done all those things; there are other ways in which this could have been a much more onerous criminal responsibility. That is what I meant by ““light touch””. We have taken the view that, to meet our international obligations, we need to have something which provides the possibility of a criminal offence, but we have put it as narrowly as possible. That is the response to the accusation of gold-plating. Once upon a time, gold-plating used to be rather a good thing to do, but in this context it is not.