Business Rate Supplements Bill

I appreciate that the Bill will not necessarily create fully fledged Crossrails across the board. The hon. Gentleman made a comparison between the proposed business rate supplements and business improvement districts. I believe that we will return to that matter in other debates this afternoon. It is crucial that we draw a firm distinction between the two. My biggest fear is that by putting the Bill on the statute book, we will allow it to be used for small infrastructure projects that should be covered not by a BRS but by BID-type schemes. A BID works by being highly localised and highly focused, and by working for businesses that, as in my constituency, are often within a couple of roads or a small number of blocks of each other. Those schemes work extremely well, and having some sort of delivery board mechanism makes sense in the context of a highly localised scheme. My concern, which is implicit in all the amendments in this group, is that no local authority should be able to say, "Right, we've now got our BRS scheme through and we do not need to bother with worrying about the concerns of business or anybody else for the next 10 or 12 years", or however long the project takes. That would be wrong, which is why I support amendment 16. Equally, we should avoid highly prescriptive man-management that would only provide a further level of bureaucracy and confusion. I hope that the Government will give some thought here and in another place to finding a way to ensure that the credibility of BRS schemes is maintained. I know that we will come on to ballots later this afternoon, but my biggest concern is that without some safeguard for business, there is a real risk that credibility will be undermined and the system will simply be seen as another opportunity for a cash-grab from the Government, rather than used for a specific purpose that benefits a business community in infrastructure terms.