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Companies Bill [Lords]

With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will not say much, because we have discussed this issue endlessly. I will merely say that we did not accept the Conservative amendment in the House of Lords because by replacing ““and”” with ““or”” we would effectively be saying that any bad news about a company should not be reported, and we thought that that was a bridge too far. The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) is right: the position is entirely based on the judgment of the director, and for that reason it is not prescriptive. The Conservative spokesmen have resisted prescription, in terms of standards, throughout the Bill’s passage; for them now to ignore the fact that without prescription the position is bound to be less clear strikes me as a bit churlish, if I may say so. We have endlessly discussed corporate social responsibility in the passage of this Bill. Conservative Members say that they espouse it in theory, but every time that it comes to the practice, they condemn it. Tonight, they condemn it in such a way that they will not even vote against it, which strikes me as being even more wimpish than they have been in the past. However, in the spirit in which we have reached almost the end of this process, I hope that the House will concur with the Lords amendments. Question agreed to. Lords amendments in lieu thereof agreed to.