My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his earlier comments. I hope that this will be a short sitting, in marked contrast to the rather livelier sittings that we experienced in the main Chamber together last week. I also thank him for his comments and questions about issue. Just to reassure him, where concerns have been expressed, we will keep matters under review and evaluate them at the time of the post-implementation review. This will include implications for taxation, which is an important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson.
While the regulations have merit in themselves, they are part of a wider package of measures that implement the recommendations of the Nuttall review of employee share ownership. They simplify the company law provisions on the buy-back of a company’s own shares in a manner which reduces administrative burdens and increases the flexibility available to companies to administer and finance buy-backs in a way that best suits their needs. The proposals in the regulations were endorsed and enhanced by the consultation process, and as I mentioned earlier, are mainly targeted at private limited companies that undertake buy-backs pursuant to, or for the purposes of, an employee share scheme. The measures are not only deregulatory but enabling.
Picking up the point about costs raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, he may be reassured that the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, the RPC, confirmed that these changes are deregulatory and impose little or no cost to business. Having said that there are no costs to Government from the measures, I can make no other substantive comments on costs, but it may help the noble Lord if I also mention the question of savings. It is not possible to quantify the potential savings to business, as these will vary greatly depending on a range of factors, including the size of the business, the scale of the share scheme and the quantity of the shares bought back over a given period of time.
For example, a company which has several buy-backs during the course of a year could benefit from being able to approve these buy-backs in advance, rather than having to focus on approval each time the buy-back is effected individually. I regret that it is not as yet possible to quantify this.