My Lords, Amendment 15 brings to the attention of the Committee the suggestion that if the reports that are being received by Parliament are those which are mainly being generated within the Companies Act register of reporting requirements, there may be some gaps in terms of independent review. So the main purpose is to require such a review every five years following enactment, and also to have an interim report.
I am sure that the Minister will again argue that the bank will have sufficient to do under the Companies Act, and that, as a public company falling within the
Freedom of Information Act, there is already a sufficiency of reporting requirements for the bank. He may argue that requiring any more might be regarded as otiose, but there are some reasons why I think the export report would be of value.
The rationale for setting up the bank is to bridge a gap in understanding between the investor community and those who wish to manufacture, develop and trade in the green technologies. Surely a periodic report of what the bank has been doing and how successful it has been in fulfilling its purposes, a check on its competitiveness and a review of the main trends and factors likely to affect its future performance would help bridge that gap and help improve the sector as a whole, leading to greater investment.
In a similar way the preparation of an external expert report would surely help the bank sharpen its performance and help improve its knowledge and understanding of the sector. It may well be that it has collected the best and the brightest to work within the bank, but, even so, whenever there is an external report, there always is more that is achieved because of the preparation for that reporting requirement than there is perhaps by actually going through the process. So in that sense it would be an assistance to the company itself.
Thirdly, the existence of such a report would surely assist those who would otherwise only be able to rely on the standard output of the bank under the Companies Act. With that, I beg to move.