Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business Names (Sensitive Words and Expressions) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these two sets of regulations, which are to do with names that companies and limited liability partnerships are prohibited from using because, as he said, to do so could mislead the public. In that respect, of course we accept the regulations and welcome the intent to protect the public from harm. I hope that the Minister will forgive me for slightly pulling his leg but, in the context of numerous pieces of legislation that we have debated in your Lordships’ House in recent years, I can recall frequently hearing Ministers dismissing amendments on the ground that they proposed lists, arguing instead for a comprehensive but simple set of principles against which something—in this case, a proposed name—should be assessed. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that and explain the process by which in this case two lists were arrived at, despite the Government’s distaste for such things. One of the problems with lists is that you can find that you have forgotten to include something that you ought to have included. For example, the Association of Colleges has drawn the attention of some noble Lords to a problem that could, in its view, have been resolved by adding the word "college" to the list of prohibited names—the Minister has, of course, just referred to that. The association says that it is difficult to overestimate the damage that bogus colleges are doing to the good name of British education. It also points out that there is widespread concern that bogus colleges are set up with the express purpose of enabling prospective immigrants to bypass UK immigration controls and not to provide education and training. Will the Minister expand on the Government’s dismissal of adding that word to the list, given that words such as "polytechnic" and "university" are already protected? It is interesting to observe that, over time, the process of checking the availability of names, when one is setting up a new business, has changed. Until about 30 years ago, one started with the register of business names. That was abolished in the late 1970s; thereafter, the place to start was Companies House. I have been recently involved in setting up a new business in precisely this situation and one is still advised that, even if setting up an unincorporated business, one should check the availability of the business’s name at Companies House. Ideally, one might then register a company with the same name as the business at Companies House in order to deter others from using it. I hate to say this to the Government, because it might imply that what we are debating today has been overtaken by events, but the single most important place to reserve your name now is not Companies House but Nominet. Also, the single most important question in selecting a name for a new business is: is an appropriate domain name available as a web address on the internet? What control do the Government have, if any, over the unauthorised use of the prohibited names listed in these two sets of regulations in domain names, which, after all, can often be bought for a few pounds? It will be on the internet that the majority of fraudulent activity will take place in the future.