Rating and Valuation (S.I., 2009, No. 204)

I shall explain shortly why I believe that the ports businesses are in not a unique, but a special position. There are some unacceptable pressures, created not least by the ports review, but I want to tackle the argument that Conservative Members and the ports lobby make that, somehow, the tax liabilities, which were legally established, should be waived. That is important. In the last financial year up to only 31 October, at least 800 companies, including some of the businesses in ports, were eligible for the payments scheme. That scope will be removed from them all if the regulations do not remain in place. Backdating ratings assessments is not new, but an established feature of the business rates system. It operated the list that we are considering not only from 2005 onwards, but from 2000 onwards and before that. In 2004-05 alone, in the previous ratings list period, more than 1,500 properties were put on the list for the first time, with significant backdated liabilities in precisely the same way as the ports, about which the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and my hon. Friends are rightly concerned. However, the concentrated number of companies in that position as a result of the Valuation Office Agency's ports review is special. Let me make it clear that the ports review was not a change in the operation of the system or a change in the law. The VOA was doing its job and pursuing its legal duty to keep the ratings list up to date and accurate. That is why no impact assessment was undertaken beforehand. The ports review did not even constitute a change in the way in which the business rates system applied to businesses in ports. My hon. Friends understand, although the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst does not, that prescription was a method—a formula—for setting the rateable value of the ports operators, not the businesses in the ports. Before the ports review, 1,643 businesses in ports were separately listed and separately liable to pay business rates. In other words, three times as many ports-based businesses paid business rates on their account before the ports review than consequently paid them afterwards. In some cases, properties, which have been added and the addition of which is being contested, belong to businesses that already paid separately for other properties, sometimes in the same port.