Protection and Disclosure of Personal Information (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Considered in Grand Committee

Moved by

That the Grand Committee do consider the Protection and Disclosure of Personal Information (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 14 May and form part of the programme to implement the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. This Government remain committed to fighting economic crime while ensuring that our country maintains its reputation as a place where legitimate businesses can thrive. These objectives are supported by the reforms within the 2023 Act. Much progress on these reforms has already been made, and implementation of the Act continues at pace. This instrument forms part of the next phase of reforms.

It remains a key principle that those who are running and controlling companies should have their details publicly registered. This ensures that it is transparent to the public who those people are and that they can be held accountable for the company’s affairs. However, having personal information on the public companies register can put individuals at increased risk of harm, including fraud and identity theft and for other reasons such as in cases of domestic abuse. This instrument therefore aims to strike the right balance between transparency and privacy, ensuring that the register does not become a tool for wrongdoing. At the moment, individuals can already apply in certain limited cases to protect their residential address from the public register. Protection means that the registrar cannot display the address publicly. However, Companies House still retains the address and can share it with law enforcement and others who have functions of a public nature, if appropriate.

This instrument delivers the second of several reforms to enhance the protection of personal information on the register. It builds on regulations that came into force on 27 January. Members of this House might recall that this previous statutory instrument expanded the circumstances in which an individual can apply to protect their residential address from the public register. This new instrument will further expand the protection regime, allowing individuals to apply to protect their signature, business occupation and date of birth. It will also allow applications to protect a residential address where it is not already possible to do so, with the exception of certain charge-related filings and company names. The exceptions here reflect the consequential impacts that protecting information from those filings would have, given that their transparency is key for due diligence purposes. The Government will keep this under review.