Business Rate Supplements Bill

I had not intended to join in the debates today because my interest in the Bill, which the Minister is aware of, relates primarily to BIDs. However, I want to put my interests on record, as one has to; like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am a joint president of London Councils, which represents the boroughs and, if one has to declare one’s past interests, a great many years ago—more than I care to contemplate—I was a member of Hornsey Borough Council. Noble Lords may be surprised to learn that there ever was such an animal as that council; the territory it covered is now part of the London Borough of Haringey. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, knows a great deal more than I do about this because he has for such a long time been a member of the executive of the London Borough of Sutton, as he told us, but I wonder whether breaking the pattern of Clause 2 is a wise thing to do. The intention of Ministers in Clause 2 as it stands is to ensure that at any level of local government there is only one tier that can impose a BRS. That is a good principle, otherwise one will land businesses with multi-tier additions to their national domestic rates. I ought perhaps to add that I was the inventor of the national non-domestic rate, which was part of the Bill that introduced what was called the community charge but the press always referred to as the "poll tax". Although the poll tax disappeared, the national non-domestic rate survived, and it is part of the system today. That is a single-tier tax. It may be levied by the boroughs, but only because that is the way the system works. The noble Lord’s argument—that the boroughs should have the right to impose their own BRS because, after all, they are going to raise it for the Greater London Authority for Crossrail or whatever—does not follow at all. It so happens that they are the bodies in London that have the capacity to levy a rate, and therefore that is what they do and what they will do under the Bill. Notwithstanding my support for London Councils—I greatly admire what it has been doing in recent years; it is an admirable body—a two-tier business rate supplement system would be a dangerous step. I say so with some regret because the noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches may feel that they are speaking for the London boroughs, but one has to look at this pattern as a whole, and, as a whole, to have one single tier raising the BRS is right. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, went on to argue that the boroughs were not bursting to do anything now. No, they are not, because they are desperately trying to keep their council tax down. If they can add as little as possible to the national non-domestic rate, they will justifiably be very proud of that. Therefore, I do not think they will want to add more to the businesses in their areas, which is what the amendment implies. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, says that they may want to in the future. So be it. I hope that at some stage—perhaps when we have considered a number of amendments, including those that will be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best—we can consider providing a review mechanism not just for limits or amounts but to look at the BRS as a whole so that if changes are necessary they can be introduced through secondary rather than primary legislation. That would be the time to look at this, but in the mean time I believe that the principle in the Bill of having only one tier of local government raising the BRS is absolutely right. Therefore, I am afraid that I do not support the amendment.