§ Mr. MitchellTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what proposals he has for the registering of partnership agreements and the publication of partnership accounts under the provisions of the Limited Liability Partnerships Bill[Lords]; and what role he plans for Companies House in respect of these new entities. [125428]
§ Dr. HowellsThere will be no requirement for limited liability partnerships to register an agreement between members. The Government concluded, after wide consultation and taking account of the views of the Trade and Industry Committee, that to impose a requirement on LLPs to register a member's agreement would be of little value unless regulations determined exactly what should be contained in the agreement, and that would be almost impossible to define. Moreover, it would be impracticable for Companies House to take a view on every individual agreement to ensure agreements met the statutory criteria before allowing an LLP to register.
More detail of the Government's decision on this matter is set out in the Government Observations on the Fourth Report from the Trade and Industry Committee (Session 1998–99) on the draft Limited Liability Partnership Act (HC 529).
656WThe LLP regulations will apply the accounts and audit provisions of the Companies Act 1985 with appropriate modifications to reflect the different capital structure of LLPs. They will require LLPs to disclose similar financial information to that required of companies in their annual accounts, those accounts being filed with Companies House where they will be open for inspection.
Companies House will be responsible for the registration and striking-off of LLPs, the registration of documents which must be filed under the LLP regulations and for enforcing compliance in line with requirements of the regulations. They will also provide information on LLPs to the public as they do for companies.
§ Mr. MitchellTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whom his Department is consulting on the provisions of the Limited Liability Partnerships Bill[Lords]; and what replies he has received to date. [125702]
§ Dr. HowellsThere has been extensive consultation on the basis of three detailed consultation documents published in February 1997, September 1998 and July 1999. For each consultation copies were sent to some 1,800 consultees, including business, trade associations, academics, potential clients and regulators and meetings were held by officials with interested representatives from each of these groups. Telephone and written requests for documents resulted in around 3,000–5,000 extra copies of each document being sent out. The documents were also made available to visitors to the LLP website at www.dti.gov.uk/cld/llpbill/index.htm from September 1998. Over 300 responses were received in total. The names of those who responded can be found in the Libraries of each House and the responses are publicly available. A further short consultation paper was published in February 2000 on a more limited circulation, but was also available on the LLP website.