Business Rate Supplements Bill

Before the noble Lord, Lord Bates, withdraws his amendment, it is hardly for me to leap to the defence of the Government on transport funding for London, but I must say to the noble Earl—I am sure he has encountered this in his years as a councillor—that disentangling the real rationale behind central government funding to a local authority, which is comparable to the example that he used, is always extremely difficult. What one suspects is rarely ever confirmed, however strongly one might suspect it. Central government funding for London’s transport infrastructure was enormous. Those of us who were working in London government might have had many criticisms of what was going on, but we could not have said that London was being deprived of funding for transport infrastructure. We could have said that we did not like the way in which the Underground was dealt with, and all that, but the cash amounts over the past few years have been enormous.