Business Rates and the Recession

I can confirm that we are considering the appropriate methodology at the moment. I can further confirm that we aim to publish the proposals for consultation later this summer. I look forward to debating them, and to hearing the hon. Gentleman's representations on them. Let me move on briefly. I said earlier that we were very conscious of the economic pressures on business at present—the pressures that the international credit crunch and the economic slowdown are having. That is why, contrary to the argument that we heard earlier, there are a range of practical measures in place that are offering real help to businesses, particularly to small firms, in the face of not just a credit crunch, but a crunch of confidence, demand and, increasingly, jobs. Not to act, as independent commentators and some of the specialists have said, is likely in the long run to cost us more than the action that we are taking. To help cash-flow pressures from business taxes, those measures include putting in place a mechanism for deferring tax payments. Since it was announced in the pre-Budget report, HMRC has done so for 93,000 businesses at a value of £1.6 billion. The measures include help to secure finance for small and medium-sized enterprises through the Government enterprise finance guarantee. That enables banks to provide an initial £1.3 billion of lending to SMEs that have viable business plans but find that their normal commercial sources of support may have been choked off in the current circumstances. So far 26 lenders have signed up to the scheme and 20 of those lenders have already made offers; 1,300 businesses have been registered as eligible for support, and support to date totals almost £150 million.