COMMONS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 11 November 1976)

§ Lord W1NTERBOTTOM

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1–4 inclusive, en bloc. Again, with the permission of the House I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 16, 17, 20, 21 and 64. When the Bill was first published, a large number of organisations made representations to the Government, objecting to requirements that a company's accounts should be printed. They felt that was an unnecessary imposition, particularly for small companies. The same point was made by Members of this House when the Bill had its Second Reading. The Government made it clear from the beginning that the purpose of the requirement was merely to ensure that the accounts filed with the Registrar of Companies were legible and that the Registrar would accept any of a number of processes for reproducing documents which would result in a document which was suitable both for its use on a public file and for microfilming. However, in view of the concern caused by the word "printed", it was decided to delete the provision since a later clause, No. 25, gave the Secretary of State power to prescribe the acceptable process in more detail in regulations. For this reason, I ask the House to accept these Amendments.