Clause 113
Company Law Reform Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
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.