Clause 60
Company Law Reform Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Vera Baird (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Redcar, Labour)
The existing clause is a very clear statement of the requirement for a private company’s name to end in the appropriate statutory indicator of its status. The formulation is the same as that in the previous clause, which applies to public companies’ names. I hesitate to agree to an amendment that just restates the existing clause, which is what it does. I can compete with the hon. Gentleman on the verbiage point; personally, I find the hon. Gentleman’s sentence of 38 words less easy to understand than three sentences of no more than 17 words. I hope that he is persuaded that I have the trump card, that there really is not much point in amendment No. 124, and that he should withdraw it.
On amendment No. 125, I can almost see the hon. Gentleman’s point, but not quite. As he says, all that it does is to remove the cross-reference to the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004. It does not change the position at all; it just deletes a useful cross-reference. Since the provision in the 2004 Act requires the name of a community interest company that is not a public company to end in CIC, I would have thought it quite useful, at this point of the Bill, to have a pointer across to another piece of legislation. I am a bit hopeful that I have persuaded him to withdraw that amendment, too.