Business Rate Supplements Bill

The right hon. Gentleman is right to an extent: Crossrail is a unique project because of its size and extent. I will come back to that point because, in fact, it is an argument against the Government’s approach to the Bill. Secondly, it rather flies in the face of the Government’s own position that they take Crossrail and use it as an example to roll out nationally. The right hon. Gentleman is correct: Crossrail is a one-off. It is of exceptional size and economic importance, and its funding mechanisms have been the subject of exceptional complexity and negotiation for a very long time. Let me make it clear that if this Bill were limited in its extent purely to putting in place what is required to carry out the funding agreement for Crossrail, we Conservatives would support it, not oppose it. There has been a long-term debate about Crossrail, going back probably almost to the days before the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) and I were even in the House—certainly to when he first arrived here. It has been around for a long time, and there has been massive consideration. Business in London has been very closely involved, and it is significant that all the representative business groups in London, organisations such as the CBI and the chambers of commerce, support the supplement—for Crossrail, which is the important caveat. Their national representative organisations criticise the Bill for using the Crossrail project as an excuse to introduce a stealth tax on businesses across the rest of the country. That is the key point that is being missed. The other point, so far as London and Crossrail are concerned, is that there has been a long-standing political consensus in favour of Crossrail in London. All the major candidates at the mayoral election last year stood on a platform of supporting Crossrail and the funding package, so a democratic legitimacy exists that is not allowed for and presented in the Bill before us. It needs to be made abundantly clear that Crossrail is therefore not a justification for the Bill in its current form. It is, I am sorry to say, a classic example of the Treasury’s approach—as I said, this measure is essentially Treasury driven, as was the sub-national review—a form of fiscal mission creep to find means of gathering in more public money. A second point made in favour of the Bill is that it is additional funding.