Business Rate Supplements Bill

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I could not improve on what he said. It was an extremely powerful and entirely persuasive case—I shall certainly vote for this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, and I seem to have a fundamental disagreement about the Bill, and I am sorry about that, because I think we would agree on quite a lot. The Bill is not simply about raising the necessary revenue for Crossrail, although that is important. It is certainly not an excuse for a national rollout, as the noble Lord suggested. The point is that this—as a device to enable local authorities and business to find another way of working together under exceptional circumstances, and as part of the pattern of those evolving relationships identified by Michael Lyons, the sub-national review and then the White Paper—is all part of this progression towards better partnership, greater economic prosperity, greater local autonomy and proper delivery by local authorities on the basis of what they know their local communities need. I was about to quote the noble Lord, Lord Smith, in exactly the same context, because he absolutely summed it up. There is no doubt that local authorities across the country can take advantage of the BRS as and when they are able to. I am not a bit surprised that the LGA has said that no one is lining up to do this immediately. Of course we are in exceptionally difficult circumstances and there are other tasks in hand. However, to deny other local authorities the ability to create this sort of partnership would be profoundly undemocratic. Michael Lyons in his final report said that, ""communities need more power to choose to raise new local revenue to invest in themselves … greater flexibility over raising revenues to invest at the local level should allow communities to strengthen their own economies … over time"." He certainly did not suggest that that should be limited to London. In fact, in evidence to the Public Bill Committee in another place, it was significant that Julie Grail, the chief executive of British BIDs, stated that, ""we can see outside of London all sort of scenarios where a BRS could work very well"." The basis of the Bill is to take the long-term view and create opportunities that are not there at the moment. If the amendments were to be accepted, the rest of the country would wonder why they were being debarred from a benign opportunity—a voluntary opportunity, which is a matter of choice to them—to take advantage of this new type of partnership. There is a huge amount to gain from giving local authorities a greater ability to raise revenue for investment, in partnership with business. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has been persuaded, if not by me, then at least by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, to withdraw the amendment.