Business Rate Supplements Bill

I am grateful for that clarification, and I shall take it into account, as I am sure you would expect me to, Madam Deputy Speaker. I move on to business rate supplements, which are the subject of the debate. We have heard a lot about Crossrail, but I shall leave that issue alone. I spent two and a half years on the whole thing, and I am very doubtful whether it will ever get off the ground. That is another matter altogether, and I have made that point clear in the House on a number of occasions. I have no reason to change my mind, and I do not want to take up valuable time by proceeding through the whole Crossrail debate again. The Minister for Local Government said that this was not the best of times from a business perspective. That was pretty much an understatement, and I wish to set out the business atmosphere and climate that prevails, because it has a bearing on the debate. Many businesses would tell the House that they are in one of the worst of times, and that they face immense problems. They are burdened by the Government’s activities in recent years, which make it more difficult for them to face those problems. I shall give a brief resumé of the current business climate. In 2007, some 13,500 companies failed. The Forum of Private Business tells us that in 2009, some 200,000 businesses will fail. That is a pointer to the almost unprecedented economic situation that the businesses of this country have to deal with. KPMG, the well-known accountancy business, has stated that 150,000 companies will become insolvent in 2009, which will be the highest number since records began 50 years ago. Unemployment is at more than 2 million, and is projected to be 3 million by the end of 2009. The interesting figure was released last week that new bank lendings in the third quarter of 2008 were £447 million, compared with £16 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Those figures are all pointers to an economic climate that is unprecedented in business terms. In Northampton, businesses tell me that turnover is already down by 10 to 20 per cent. For some businesses, particularly restaurants, it is down by 30 to 35 per cent. Most of those are owned by friends from the Bangladeshi community, who run some of the most impressive Indian restaurants in the country. I am happy to pay tribute to them, but tragically they are faced with a 35 per cent. fall-off in turnover. It is as though they had fallen off a cliff. The Prime Minister now admits that the downturn will be longer and deeper than we thought. That comes after the Chancellor told us in his pre-Budget report that there would be a recovery in the third quarter of 2009. The Chancellor said:"““We are far from through this””" when asked about that projection, which perhaps hints that although he did not quite want to say ““I was wrong””, he was not far from saying it. Barry Potter, the director of the International Monetary Fund, said that it was ““very optimistic”” to forecast that Britain would begin to recover in the third quarter of 2009. It is therefore true to say that we have not done away with bust. We speak against a background of a serious recession, so what do the Government do? They propose that we think about levying extra cost, through an extra tax, on businesses, which are suffering from massive past burdens.