My Lords, I rise to give a rather more upbeat reason for supporting Amendments 44 and 47. We have just heard the noble Lord, Lord Flight, in respect of his amendments. I open by saying that I am quite astonished to hear him say that public access is open to abuse. The whole thrust of this legislation is to deal with abuse of a very serious nature by companies in all sorts of activities. The number of such companies is small, certainly; none the less, it is a very important number and some of them are very influential.
Although I shall have something to say later specifically on the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Flight, I want to speak particularly to Amendments 44 and 47 because, the noble Lord, Lord Flight, notwithstanding, most people would agree that members of the public should be able to view and share information from a company’s PSC register. As the Minister said in another place, a principle of this legislation is that information should be publicly available so that businesses can
identify who really owns the companies with which they do business. It is right that businesses should know whom they are dealing with and that civil society and the wider public can hold our companies to account. If the central register is to be updated only annually—or perhaps more frequently; we will see—it becomes important that people can access and share information from businesses’ registers as well.
The part of the legislation which concerns me—and which Amendment 44 would remove—requires people or organisations who intend sharing information from a company’s PSC register to say whom they would share it with, to give their names and addresses, and to state the purpose of sharing it. How can those questions, which appear in subsection (4)(d), be answered in advance? I do not believe it is possible. How would the person requesting the information know the individual or organisation to whom they might at some indeterminate point in the future wish to divulge any of the information that they receive? You would need to be a clairvoyant to know these answers.
The effect will be that the person requesting and subsequently receiving the information will be prevented from ever passing it on to anyone else. That will have a significant effect on the abilities of journalists and well respected organisations—such as Christian Aid and Global Witness, which have been assiduous in campaigning in this important area—to carry out the work that they do, including investigations, checking on company activities and publishing information about it. I do not quite sign up to the idea that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, because there can be cases where information can certainly be misappropriated, not least online. However, it is important that companies should be willing to defend what they do, and to do so as publicly as they reasonably can. However, I defend the concept of commercial confidentiality, although it should not be used as a cloak to enable companies to hide some of their activities, presumably those that they genuinely do not want aired publicly.
When I raised the issue at Second Reading, I was pleased that the Minister gave me an assurance that legitimate access to company registers would not be prevented. However, she did not say anything about publishing details from the companies register. I have been through the comments of her ministerial colleague in Committee in another place and, in my view, she justified paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of new Clause 790O(4) on page 162 perfectly well. However, at no stage did she justify paragraph (d), and nor did our Minister at Second Reading. As my noble friend Lord Mitchell said, it requires to be justified because, unless lines 32 to 40 are removed from the Bill, reputable organisations will be prevented from exposing and potentially rooting out corruption through carrying out and sharing investigations properly. Without doubt the measure would be used by companies to prevent publication of parts of their registers, which surely goes against the spirit of the legislation. Therefore, in addition to the question that my noble friend Lord Mitchell asked of the Minister, I simply ask her whether she can reveal what she believes subsection (4)(d) adds to the Bill.
Amendment 47 tackles the issue of exemptions. As with the point I made in my remarks on Amendments 39, 41 and 43 in relation to corporate directors, we await the outcome of a government consultation on the question of exemptions. As the Minister said to me that she hoped to write to me before Report in respect of the other consultation, and given that the one on exemptions concluded a month ago, I hope she will be able to do the same with that. It is important that we should be aware of the outcome of the consultation before the Bill completes its passage in this House.
At Second Reading I was pleased to receive from the Minister an assurance that exemptions to publishing information in the register would be given only in exceptional circumstances, which is as it should be. I should like to probe a little with this amendment because exemptions should be open to challenge. The amendment would ensure that it was possible for a decision to grant or refuse a protection provision to be challenged and that it was clear on the register that a protection provision had been granted.
A similar amendment was tabled by the honourable Member for Hartlepool in Committee in another place, and the Minister’s argument there was that the court was not the best authority to determine the applications in the first instance. She argued that the registrar was best placed to do so. Therefore, Amendment 47 provides for the registrar to make that decision. I believe that a fundamental principle is at stake here. The public interest test must always enable an exemption to be challenged when new evidence comes to light. The decision to exempt an individual may be determined in a different way by the registrar on the presentation of new evidence specific to the company on why the public interest demands disclosure.
I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment, given that it appears that it complies with what her colleague said in another place. If not, I ask her to outline how she will ensure that exemptions can be challenged in the public interest when new information comes to light. It would also be useful if the Minister could outline the broad categories under which exemptions must be given.
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I want to make some comments in relation to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Flight—specifically Amendments 44A to 44G and 44J—because I believe that they are completely contrary to the spirit of the Bill. Indeed, his concluding remarks suggest that he himself accepts that. I am particularly concerned about Amendment 44H, which it seems to me would almost certainly be in breach of the forthcoming fourth EU anti-money laundering directive. I am sure that it would be a significant step backwards for scrutiny and transparency and would uphold company secrecy. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, has given us his rationale for it but I do not think it would be widely shared.
The noble Lord was also pessimistic about what he called “other jurisdictions” creating a public register, if I have quoted him correctly. I think that that is unduly pessimistic. In the EU the Parliament has taken a position in favour of public registers in the negotiations on the anti-money laundering directive. A number of EU member countries are supportive of creating public
registers for beneficial ownership throughout the whole of Europe, not just in their own countries. The G20 has also announced new high-level principles on beneficial ownership. All G20 countries, including Russia, China and even Saudi Arabia, are now committed to, and accountable for, improving the provisional access of beneficial ownership information. I accept that that is not common for the establishment of registers but it represents progress. How far that progress will run remains to be seen but we need to counter the doom-and-gloom idea.
I remember debating with the noble Lord, Lord Flight, a year ago on the banking reform Bill when he said that if some of the proposals in respect of company directors and anti-money laundering went through, we would see people disappearing from the City of London and working in places such as Geneva. I wonder what the people working in Geneva are thinking this week. I suspect it is about coming back to Britain, if indeed they ever left, because it has turned out to be not quite the haven they might have regarded it as being. My view is that the City of London and British business are extremely strong. It is a place where people want to work. We should be setting the highest standards within it to make it better, stronger and more widely regarded. To those who say that if we bring in legislation that is stronger than currently exists we will scare people away, I repeat the words that I think I said during the banking reform Bill—if those sorts of people are scared off that easily then, frankly, let them go.