Clause 34.—(PROVISION FOR SECURING THAT INFORMATION FURNISHED UNDER SECTION 33 IS RECORDED AND MADE AVAILABLE.) (Hansard, 19 July 1967)

§ Mr. Jay

I beg to move Amendment No. 211, in page 39, line 18, after first 'inspection' to insert: 'but save in so far as it contains information with respect to a company for the time being entitled to avail itself of the benefit conferred by section 3(3) or 4(3) of this Act'. With this Amendment Amendments Nos. 212 and 214 are associated.

The purpose of these Amendments is to ensure that a dispensation given to a company under Clause 3 or Clause 4 is 2363 not nullified by the provisions in this Clause. This would otherwise have been the effect of the Bill. That was not an effect which any of us intended. As the Clause stands, a dispensation given under Clause 3(3) or Clause 4(3) permits a company to withhold from its accounts, or from a statement annexed to its annual return, information about a subsidiary or an associated company which is incorporated outside the United Kingdom or, being incorporated in the United Kingdom, carries on business outside the United Kingdom. It follows that, if the information were open to inspection, there would be publication of the fact that the company keeping the register was a subsidiary of or asociated with the company which had been granted the dispensation. That would defeat the object of the dispensation, which was intended to avoid publication of any relationship between the company to which the dispensation had been granted and the company in respect of which it is permitted to withhold information.

The Amendment overcomes that difficulty by providing that, where a register kept in accordance with the Clause contains information about a company which for the time being is entitled to avail itself of the benefit conferred by Clause 3(3) or Clause 4(3), that part of the register which contains that information shall not be open to inspection. I think that achieves what both sides of the House intended.

§ Mr. Michael Shaw

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on expounding this matter so clearly so early in the morning. The dawn must be breaking. The Amendment makes a tremendous improvement, because it blocks a very important loophole, in that people could have been very easily embarrassed through having information disclosed under this Clause, whereas the intention was to keep it hidden by loopholes in earlier Clauses. This reveals once again that we are reaching a stage in legislation when there seem to be so many complications that powers of discretion to ease the onus in as many respects as possible are necessary, This is a deficiency in the Bill that we have found. We have found several others. Indeed, no fewer than 175 Amendments have been tabled by the Government on Re- 2364 port. There may well be other deficiencies in the Bill which we have not yet unearthed. The more scope we can have to give the Board of Trade power to relieve people of necessities such as this the better.