COMMONS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 23 July 1973)

§ THE EARL OF LIMERICK

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 2. With this I think we might take No. 37. The Amendment to Clause 2 makes clear that the fitness of a director, controller or manager of a company seeking authorisation to carry on a class of insurance business is to be related to the requirements and responsibilities of whichever of these positions he is to hold. It replaces the wider, less precise and possibly more pejorative phrase a fit and proper person to be associated with the company". The clause as introduced had already substituted references to a managing director or chief executive, a director or manager for the less precise and broader term "officer" used in Section 64 of the 1967 Act which it replaced. In both cases we are seeking to avoid casting the net unnecessarily wide.

The second Amendment to Clause 34 is to a large extent presentational rather than substantive. It gets rid of the unnecessarily pejorative expression, not a fit and proper person to be associated with the company", (which could suggest that the man concerned was not fit even to be perhaps an office boy or hall porter), and substitutes the more precise reference to "a controller". It is not necessary to make corresponding Amendments in Clause 33, dealing with the appointment of a managing director or chief executive, as it is already clear that it is fitness for appointment to that position which is now under consideration, or in Clauses 22 and 23 where 1559 the particulars to be given must necessarily include the name of the holder of a particular position. I beg to move.