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

I, too, will be brief, given the hour and the amount of time left in the debate. I want to concentrate on one aspect of the issue. I was profoundly depressed not only by today's debate, but by the amount of time that we have spent going round the same track again and again. The matter was first raised with me last year by Peter Aarinson, who runs Danbrit Shipping in Goole, in my constituency. I rang my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government in his constituency the very same day, which is when this all began. We are all told things by constituents from time to time, and we know that not everything is as it appears when we are first told it. When I was first told about the situation, my reaction was that either there was more to the matter than I was being told, or the situation was so obviously wrong that something would be done to correct it. It did not enter my naive little head last year that months later, it would all be confirmed, and not enough would be done to resolve the situation. I want to make a point about double taxation, because however we wrap it up, that is at the nub of the argument. The people concerned have been paying business rates to their port operators, and the letter that I intervened about earlier in the debate showed that clearly. One cannot go back to a company later and say, ““You've got to pay again, because we've given the money back to the people from whom we took it in the first place.”” One or two of us had a meeting this morning with some Treasury officials to discuss the order, which I said is like lobbing a grenade into a whole area of business, running away and waiting to see what happens. Businesses cannot be left in that position. I have met ABP, which is the port operator for my area. It has no intention of giving back any of the money. It says that although it is true that in Goole, my constituency, they have received a lot of money back, the liability of ABP across the country has gone up, so it does not see that it has gained. That may be true in certain ports, such as the one in my constituency, but the money is not going to flow back. If the Minister and officials think the way to resolve the matter is to say, ““It's a private matter which companies will have to sort out themselves””, that is not good enough. They should be doing something to bring the parties together and thrash it out. To me, it would be much simpler for the Government to say that the liability will start in 2010, in which case everybody would know where they are. Businesses could take that into account in their business plans and then move on to have successful and progressive businesses for the future. In his remarks to the House my right hon. Friend the Minister made great play of the fact that he is offering assistance, which we appreciate. He went on to say that that is unprecedented, which we appreciate as well. He then said that there is no other way to deal with taxation. Well, if we are going to do something unprecedented, we might as well do the correct bit of unprecedented work. That means taking away the liability for now, accepting that those businesses have paid and setting their liability for future business years. I shall finish on this point, as others wish to speak. Just before I came in for the debate, I was in a meeting with other Ministers about another issue. We were discussing copyright term extension, which is an issue for another day—the subject is complex and the legalities are difficult. At the end of that meeting, a Minister said to me, ““You know, Ian, it's not just about legality. It's about morality.”” That could be applied to the present debate. Those businesses have been let down terribly by the system. It is a great source of despair to me that it is my Government who have done that, but they have, and now they are obliged to put it right.