Business Rates

It is interesting that the last time the revaluation took place, in 2000, the hon. Gentleman's party chose to adopt a five-year transitional relief. The option to do that again was dismissed by his Government. I have asked the Government what they plan to do in the 2010 revaluation, and we still have no response from them. Part of the problem is bad information. I am happy to send to him parliamentary question after parliamentary question in which I asked how many companies were affected by transitional relief, to which there was no answer. The last time any assessment seems to have been done on the impact on businesses of the withdrawal of transitional relief was in 2004. At that time there was no recession. Now we have a recession, but Ministers have not been prepared to revisit any of their decisions. Again, we hear their defeatist attitude—"We cannot do anything to help small businesses. Let's just push on with the plan that we already have."