Clause 78
Company Law Reform Bill [Lords]
2:00 pm
Vera Baird (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Redcar, Labour)
We can only applaud the deregulatory purpose of amendment No. 144, but the Bill’s provision that the name change need not be by special resolution has a far greater deregulatory effect. The scheme of the Bill is to provide a simple system for notifying the change of name, whether or not it is done by special resolution. This will mean that changes of name will take effect more quickly than at present.
Under the current arrangements, Companies House needs to check every special resolution to see whether it includes a name change. That causes delays in processing that might lead to the mischiefs that we discussed this morning. Last year, 143,286 special and written resolutions were filed, of which 56,954 involved a change of name. Requiring this document to be sent in is a useful flag for Companies House showing that the name is being changed.
Amendment No. 144 would retain the existing arrangements for name changes by special resolution, which causes delays in processing because invariably special resolutions contain far more than just the change of name. It is Companies House’s experience that having to dig through a morass of other provisions in the resolution inevitably causes delay.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment because, on balance, we are even more deregulatory than he is here, although I can see how at first sight it does not look that way. AmendmentNo. 145 would put in a requirement that a special resolution should be filed. I understand that that is already in clause 29 and the amendment would duplicate that requirement.