Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am not quite as happy as the Minister thought I might be. What we are concerned about is the question of the meshing of this piece of legislation with what went before. The Law Society still has some concerns about it. I wonder if it would be possible for the Minister, the Bill team and Government to consider whether we could have a schedule to the Bill which would consist of a table identifying which provisions in the Bill correspond to provisions being repealed for the purposes of this clause. There is certainly a concern which I explained on our last day in Committee about how these all mesh together. I said then that the new clause appears to apply only when existing provisions are re-enacted with or without modification. It does not appear to cover the situation where an existing provision is simply repealed without being re-enacted. I also think some of these concerns continue to persist in the world at large. We share the Government’s view that we are trying to make company law comprehensible and accessible. Some practitioners and the Law Society feel that a schedule with a table would help bring the whole thing together. I wonder if the Minister could comment further on the possibility of some such arrangement being made available.