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

I shall make three brief points. First, I find it almost unbelievable that the attitude of the Government to the entire issue is that something in which they have had no part has been done to them and that they have no control over the Valuation Office Agency. That cuts no ice with companies in ports. As a spokesman for one of them, Peel Ports, told the Liverpool Daily Post:"““This is a government ratings revaluation which affects all the ports””." My second point is on the impact assessment. I heard what the Minister said about why there was no impact assessment, but under pressure from the Opposition, he has, as the information that he gave us in the course of the debate revealed, brought out some of the points that we would expect to see in an impact assessment. The trouble is that bringing them out in this way does not provide the context to enable us to judge them, so I am still left with questions. How many companies does he estimate will go insolvent as a result of the measure? Does he have an estimate of how many are likely to move out of the UK, which is a real possibility? As the Humber Dock Rating Group spokesman said, making a terrible pun:"““There is a question now among the shipping industry whether they should re-sink their investments in ports in the UK, or whether they should look to move as much of their business as they can off-shore””." Thirdly, the impact on unemployment is relevant. Returning to the intervention that the Minister was kind enough to let me make, I still find it difficult to believe that there is a threefold difference in the estimate of the liabilities between one part of the evidence base and the other. I understand what the Minister has said about what subsequently happened, but at the time the evidence was put together, there was still that wide gap. It was put down to assumptions. Those should have been, and probably were, known, and we should have been told. That all smacks of the Health Committee's criticism that the Government simply rush into these things without proper ideas of success criteria, without any design of policy and without any assessment of the impact.