Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reasons the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill requires the verification of information about company directors and Persons of Significant Controls but does not require the same for information about company shareholders.

The purpose of the identity verification proposals in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill is to provide greater confidence in the integrity of information on who owns and controls companies. Those are their directors and those who satisfy one or more of the criteria which qualify them as persons of significant control. In many companies the vast majority of shareholders are passive investors whose holdings are of insufficient size to afford them control. While it is proper that the identity of those shareholders be disclosed in publicly available registers, it would be disproportionate to require their identities to be verified.