Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 512: "Leave out Clause 865." The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment is extremely simple. It returns us to an issue which we spent some time debating in Grand Committee. We began then by tabling a series of probing amendments to see whether there was any logic or any economic or commercial justification for the Government’s policy. There appeared to be none. So we also tabled a clause stand part debate and received no clearer answer then. Accordingly, we seek now, as we sought then, the removal of this reserve power for the Treasury to make provision by regulation to require institutions to provide specified information about the exercise or non-exercise of voting rights attached to their shares. We agree that there should be full disclosure of how voting rights are exercised by financial institutions for those on whose behalf they invest, but we do not see any reason why it should be compulsory for disclosure to be made to the public at large. Nor do we agree that the heavy-handed approach proposed in the Bill is the best way to achieve this. I shall not repeat this evening the facts and figures that I gave in Grand Committee, but it is clear that there is a growing move to voluntary disclosure in any case, which the passing of this clause may slow down. Included in our concerns are a number of technical problems relating to the practical implications of the Government’s proposal. The Government have failed so far to provide any explanation of how these would be overcome. Instead, the noble Lord hid behind these conventional words: "““I can reassure him that before a statutory disclosure regime was introduced there would be full consultation and a cost/benefit analysis to ensure that any final regime was proportionate and properly targeted””.—[Official Report, 25/4/2006; col. GC80.]" From the number of representations on this clause that we have received, and from the diversity of backgrounds from which they have come, I suggest that we already have a clear idea of what the result of that consultation would be; that is, to scrap this proposal. I hope that the Minister has thought seriously about the matter since Committee and will now take the opportunity to do so. I beg to move.