Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Geoffrey Borwick (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, there is a very significant difference between privacy and secrecy. There could be lots of reasons for privacy, but not only involving an entrepreneur. Take Tony Blair’s tax return, for instance. That is his private matter, but this Bill will open up private matters to anyone for any proper purpose. Blair and others can support their own cases, but who will speak up for the entrepreneurs? It is indeed a great power of the state to inquire about something, but that power should not be given to all its citizens. The state has its own secrets too, which is as it should be. Transparency is not always a merit. These proposals presume that anything which is not transparent is bad, and that anyone who is involved in anything secret is guilty of something. That is clearly not the case. There are nearly 3.5 million businesses in the UK. The vast majority of them are law-abiding and simply trying to make products that people want to buy or provide services that they need. In any case, there is unlikely to be reliable ownership information on criminals, who can be expected to conceal their interests. If this is intended to root out a few bad cases, then it really is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut Tony Blair mentioned in his memoirs that he regrets the freedom of information legislation. I can see why, as life has got more complex since then, with real threats affecting Britain. It is not impossible that extremist threats could be made against alcohol producers or other producers of goods not approved by IS sympathisers, or scientists and research facilities by violent animal welfare groups. Debbie Vincent was sentenced to six years in prison after attempting to blackmail an animal testing company. The campaign she was involved in used the threat of improvised explosive devices and the desecration of graves. Cases like that must be taken into consideration when we decide what information to make available. But it is not just extremist threats. Freedom of information has unquestionably changed people’s behaviour. This is mainly to avoid things being written down, which can make simple tasks all the more difficult to carry out. Not writing things down has the perverse effect of encouraging more secretive behaviour I took a look at the impact assessment of the policy, which was mentioned by my noble friend. I found it staggering. The cost is estimated to be £1.08 billion and the value zero—no benefits apart from a woolly promise to "lead the way" on transparency. Can our coalition partners or the Labour Party really not think of anything better to do with a billion pounds than make companies waste it on lawyers? There may well be Members of this House who believe that there could be nothing wrong with spending a billion pounds on professional fees, but they are in the minority and I believe they are proven lawyers. With these new rules, a private company raising money to employ more people and expand will have to go through extra hurdles to get a new shareholder. It is hard enough to get a new shareholder when a company really needs it, so any extra burdens will make that important task much more difficult.