Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness’s amendment. It may interest the House to know that 11 years of my life have been spent practising overseas. That is difficult and almost impossible where there is no reciprocity. Some of my friends wonder how I ever managed to learn Dutch; you have to take tests in Dutch and Dutch law to get a licence in the Netherlands, because there is no reciprocity. That gives serious difficulty, as that language is almost impossible to learn—yet it was unnecessary for me to have a knowledge of the Dutch language to do my work. I was dealing exclusively there with international businesses that worked the whole time in English; indeed, all their Dutch staff demanded that they did so. This issue of reciprocity is critical, yet it is not moving. There is stalemate.