Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Solicitor General (Also Shadow Minister for Trade and Industry), Law Officers (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Huntingdon, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 24, in clause 113, page 51, line 15, leave out ‘is registered' and insert

‘has its principal place of business'.

We are now dealing with what is currentlysection 353 of the Companies Act 1985, which deals with the location of registers. Subsection (1) and allows for the register to be kept at a location other than the company’s registered office in specific circumstances. Clause 113 requires the register to be available for inspection at a specified location, which can be the company’s office or another place in the part of the United Kingdom in which the company is registered.

The amendment is probing. It would change the clause to provide for the register to be kept available for inspection where the company has its principal place of business. The point is that that could help to prevent companies from getting up to no good. Let me explain. It might be attractive for a company based, say, in London that wanted to avoid inspections to use a company that was registered in Northern Ireland, for example, which would make access to registers a much more difficult business. The purpose of the amendment is to prevent that.

Margaret Hodge (Minister of State (Industry and the Regions), Department of Trade and Industry; Barking, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the clause differs from the existing provision in that it refers to where the register is kept available for inspection, rather than simply where it is kept. That is because where electronic registers are kept is debatable, and they may be updated from various locations; what matters is where they are kept available for inspection. We hope that the new formulation will remove any difficulty that might have arisen when, for example, a company with its registered office in Scotland employed a commercial registrar in England.

However, because the courts of a country in which a public register is kept have exclusive jurisdiction over entries in that register, it is essential that the jurisdiction in which a company’s register of members is kept available for inspection is not subject to change, as it would be if the amendment were agreed. I was slightly puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s contribution in that respect. The jurisdiction over a company’s registered office is fixed on the company’s incorporation, and clearly that jurisdiction’s courts should always apply to its register of members.

I hope that that reply has alleviated the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, and that he will withdraw the amendment.

Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Solicitor General (Also Shadow Minister for Trade and Industry), Law Officers (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Huntingdon, Conservative)

The Minister has confirmed the existing position, and I think that I have made my point. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.