Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

My Lords, I am in sympathy with my noble friend Lord Flight’s amendment, but maybe not with the details, for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, indicated. I declare an interest in that I am the director of a small company. This is the company that manages the house in which I live, which is divided into four flats. We have four shareholders, who are those who live in the four flats, and it is convenient for us to organise the cleaning of the common parts and that sort of thing through a company. It is controlled by the four of us. It has very small sums of money, but we would still have to have a register saying that nobody else controlled the company —at least I suppose we would. There are numerous companies, both trading companies and those like the one that I refer to, which would be caught by this legislation and in my view should not be. It may be that my noble friend’s amendment requires refinement and elaboration, but he has a good point in principle.