Business Rate Supplements Bill

As always, I am grateful to the Minister for her full and detailed reply. She is right that we will need to read and think about it and we will probably discuss it. We had some considerable exchanges on Amendment 38, and we concluded that we would receive a letter and consider it further in the light of that. I did not understand the reply on Amendment 39. I think it was to the effect that local authorities are expected to publish the results of the consultation; therefore an amendment requiring them to publish the results of the consultation is not necessary. I do not follow that argument at all. It seems perverse. In my quite lengthy experience of consultation, including with my own authority, the one area where we most often fall down is not responding to the consultees about the results and the outcome of the consultation. So while good intention and good practice would always be to publish the revisions, that does not always happen in practice, whether by commission or omission. I do not understand that. Unless I misunderstood the Minister, which is quite possible because the infamous helicopters were back again, saying it is not necessary because it is expected is rather illogical. We will wait to read the debate and consider the rest of the amendments in that context. I want to put on record something about the consultation document. I have not raised this before and I had not intended to raise it, but since the Minister has two or three times today referred to it being available on Wednesday, I shall raise it. In fact, it was emailed to me—I can speak for no one else—at 4.40 pm on Thursday afternoon. I have not yet received a hard copy. I have printed it off, which is fine. I am not complaining about that. It may well be that the hard copy got to the House of Lords Library by 4.40 pm on Thursday, but I suggest that not many of us were here to rush to the Library to collect it for our weekend reading. I put on record that it was 4.40 pm on Thursday afternoon, and the covering letter that came with it is dated Thursday; so let us be a bit clearer about that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 38 withdrawn. Amendments 39 and 40 not moved. Clause 6 agreed.