My Lords, in moving Amendment 37D, I shall speak also to Amendments 44HA, 47A and 44 and will be returning to the central themes that I marked out when speaking to the amendments in the previous two groups: the need to ensure that the boundaries and scope of the provisions that we are talking about are adequately drawn so as to ensure that no loopholes remain and the need for appropriate transparency to make sure that the register serves the purpose that it was intended to serve. As before, I will often be probing rather than criticising the measures, which have our support.
Our Amendment 37D, the first in this group, would provide for the explicit circumstances when it will be necessary to exclude otherwise necessary information from the register. Clearly, it is understandable that, where there is a danger either to an individual or to national security, companies can be exempted from providing information. However, it is important that those circumstances are explicitly in the Bill, otherwise there may be exemptions for less important reasons in the future. The amendment also provides for any such decision to be challengeable through judicial review. Despite the fact that this Government have recently set about attempting to damage and degrade judicial review, it remains an important mechanism for holding the Government to account—hence its provision here.
I have also added my name to Amendment 44. My noble friend Lord Watson will no doubt be able to give a more complete explanation of it in a moment, but the essential point is that the Bill as drafted appears to preclude the possibility of a journalist using the register to investigate a potential impropriety. New Section 790O(4)(d) says that any request for information should include whether or not the information is going to be passed on to another person. In an age where open data are providing insight in a variety of fields, appearing to want to prevent them being passed from one person to another seems—to me, at least—to be a rather odd decision. I am keen to hear the Minister’s explanation for that subsection.
Amendment 44A is a probing amendment. New Section 790P sets out the process through which a company, upon receiving a request for information, can either provide it or go to court. However, subsection (4), which sets out when a company does not have to comply with a request, appears to have no time limit attached. Our amendment requires it to be reviewed annually.
Amendment 47A follows on from Amendment 37D in marking out the extent of the exclusions. Circumstances where a person’s details could be suppressed from a register are to be laid out in regulations by the Secretary of State. Amendment 47A would make it possible to challenge any such decisions. Taken together, these
amendments would improve the clarity of these provisions and improve their ability to increase transparency about ownership of companies. I beg to move.