Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of expanding the definition of de facto directors to include natural person directors of corporate directors.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government plans to make several changes to the rules governing corporate directors, including requirements that corporate directors of limited companies must be entities with legal personality, directors (or equivalents) of corporate director entities must all be natural persons and be subject to ID verification, and that corporate directors must be UK-registered.
Any person is a de facto director if they assume the status and functions of a company director even if they have not been properly appointed. It is not possible to expand the definition of a de facto director, it being a factual rather than a legal status.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what proportion of reports of breaches by directors of the Insolvency Act 1986 and Companies Act 2006 were investigated by the Insolvency Service in each of the last five years.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Insolvency Service receives reports on directors’ conduct, in particular of companies entering formal insolvency procedures.
Cases with reports of director misconduct are considered in line with the Insolvency Service’s acceptance criteria. The most serious cases are vetted and where appropriate taken forward for investigation.
Information from Insolvency Service internal management systems shows the number of cases vetted and investigations commenced with a view to director disqualification in the last 5 years. The latter includes a number of cases where the investigation commenced as a result of information from another source.
Companies vetted in any one year may be taken forward for investigation in a later year. The figures in the table relate to the number of companies not the number of directors. An investigation may encompass more than one company.
The first column excludes companies vetted in compulsory liquidation cases prior to January 2020.
| Companies Vetted | Civil investigations started |
2017/18 | 8,528 | 1,669 |
2018/19 | 9,059 | 1,748 |
2019/20 | 9,041 | 1,899 |
2020/21 | 6,284 | 1,484 |
2021/22 | 6,340 | 1,700 |
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of (a) increasing the value of penalties that Companies House levies on companies for filing failures that trigger automatic strike-off routines, and (b) using the funds raised from such penalties to fund Insolvency Service investigations of insolvent companies.
Answered by Paul Scully
The late filing penalty regime was introduced to encourage directors to file their accounts on time. Using it as a source of revenue to fund investigation activity would present difficulties, as it would mean relying on behaviour that we are actively trying to discourage.
We are reviewing funding as part of our wider reforms, and have committed to ensuring that fees remain low by international standards.
Asked by: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to encourage companies to take up innovative technologies to make packaging more accessible to people with sight impairments.
Answered by Lee Rowley
The Government recognises the specific challenges faced by people with sight loss or visual impairment, and that consideration of equality impacts must be integral in all key policy decisions.
UK Research and Innovation have work undertaken to accelerate innovation in assistive technologies, which is set out in the National Institute of Health Research’s report on Research and Development Work Relating to Assistive Technology.
The Royal National Institute for Blind People can support businesses to develop more accessible products and services, and can recommend solutions, technologies and tools to help resolve accessibility issues.