Clause 21 - Power to enter and remain on premises
Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Shadow Minister, Economic Affairs; Sutton Coldfield, Conservative)
I am grateful to you, Mr. Conway, for keeping me on the straight and narrow. Any official advice that might be given to the Minister in respect of the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central is bound to say, ''Resist'' or, ''Beware of an apparent agreement between Sutton Coldfield and
Stoke-on-Trent''. None the less, the hon. Gentleman is correct: Members of Parliament should be enormously careful about granting open-ended powers in such areas.
The Minister makes great play of the fact that the Secretary of State will have to authorise such an investigation, but it is extremely likely that almost every time the Secretary of State is asked to authorise, he or she will do so. If I remember rightly the comments made in the other place, the Minister there conceded that that was virtually certain to be the case.
The provisions that we seek to pass into law today mean that someone will not be told why they are being investigated, because the Minister resisted those amendments. Officials will not have a greater burden of certainty imposed on them before they make their inquiries, because those amendments have been rejected. Officials will be able to stay as long as they like—one can imagine officialdom sitting with folded arms, saying, ''Until you tell me what I want to know, I'm not going to move.'' I sought to win the Minister's support by mentioning the domestic circumstances into which an official might enter. The threat that an official could stay for a long time, putting undue pressure on a director being investigated, is real.
The Minister said blithely that we must not be in the business of imposing too many limitations on the powers, but I simply want to impose some limitations on those powers. It is our constituents who will be investigated by an over-mighty bureaucracy and investigatory regime, and that is wrong.
I shall withdraw my amendment, but I give notice to the Minister that I want to test the view of the House of Commons on Report to see whether the majority of our colleagues believe that the powers as drafted are excessive and go beyond what Parliament should permit of investigators in pursuit of our constituents, that the powers are unbalanced, and that they need to be amended. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 22 and 23 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.