Business Rate Supplements Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the point is well brought out by the experience of the business improvement districts. When there is a good BID proposal and businesses see the merit of it, the proposal is carried through in the ballot and businesses vote for it. The test is as simple as that. My hon. Friend makes a very solid point. I hope that we have set out a number of our concerns about where the Bill fails to address the objectives of the initial debate. I also wanted briefly to touch on the other matters referred to in the amendment, which include the missed opportunities in the Bill. Not only do we have to consider the proposals with the BRS, but we have to consider them alongside the accumulation of other burdens on businesses. We have the BRS on top of the community infrastructure levy. In some areas, we have the possibility of congestion charging and now we have the revival of the cost potential of a workplace parking levy. I hope that at some point the Government will give us some overall assessment of the economic impact of all those potential burdens on business. Will the Government also look again at whether BIDs’ contributions should be automatically offset to avoid a form of double taxation? I want to address two other issues to which we have referred where action has not been taken. The first relates to the situation with empty properties. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) will deal with the point later, but there is a real concern about the way in which the Government’s proposals have worked through in relation to empty property relief. It cannot be satisfactory to have a set of disincentives that cause people to take the roofs off buildings and to demolish industrial plants simply to avoid the levy. We cannot blame the businesses because, with respect to the Minister, there was a lack of economic reality in the advice he was given when he said that the move would be an incentive for people not to leave business premises empty for so long. No landlord wants to leave their premises empty. In the current economic climate, premises are empty because there are not the customers. Clobbering people with the loss of relief is hardly helpful to business confidence at a time when it is falling.