Business Rates

I can assure my hon. Friend that I will come to the issue of empty property rates. To return to the new valuations—this also picks up on the point that the hon. Member for North Cornwall made—they were completed at the beginning of this month. We are looking at the results, and I hope to be able to say a little more in the next few weeks. However, we can expect those sectors and locations that have done well in recent years to see increases in bills, whereas those that have not fared as well are likely to see reductions. That addresses some of the points that the hon. Gentleman made. All the rateable values will be published at the end of September. At the same time, we will provide a business rates calculator to help ratepayers estimate their rates bills for 2010. That is something that we introduced in 2005, and it has been helpful to businesses that wish to plan ahead. Under the previous system—this relates to my earlier point—there was a problem, because people did not know what their rates were likely to be, sometimes until the last few weeks of the financial year. However, the excellent business rates calculator will help people to plan ahead. We introduced it because we know how important it is to businesses to plan ahead. We will make even more improvements to the business rates calculator, so that by October, business rate payers will be able to estimate their 2010 rates by using their 2010 rateable values. In addition, for those ratepayers who face increases in the 2010 revaluation, we will introduce transitional arrangements to phase in those increases. Again, although not resiling from the system that was introduced, we are looking at ways of helping people where specific problems have arisen, first, from the 5 per cent. increase and, secondly, from some of the revaluations, and as I have said, we will consult on those. At the last revaluation, in 2005, we introduced a transitional arrangement scheme, which lasted for the first four years of the five-year rating list. The idea was to ensure that all ratepayers paid their normal rates bills for at least one year of the rating list. Those ratepayers affected will have had four years to plan for their 2009-10 rates bills. The hon. Member for Putney said that the Government had ignored the responses to the 2004 consultation paper. There were 66 responses, and although nine favoured a five-year scheme, 44 favoured a four-year scheme ending on 1 April 2009, so we did listen to the responses in 2004. We also listened, again, to businesses when they faced increases, and that is why we introduced the deferral scheme. With respect to the ending of the transitional relief scheme, we listened to people, and that is why we introduced the transitional relief scheme for the increases for 2005 to 2009. With respect to the laying of regulations for the business rates deferral scheme, I can assure the House that we are working on introducing the necessary legislation for the scheme by the end of July, as we explained on 31 March, when it was first announced. Those regulations will cover the deferral of the 5 per cent. retail prices index increase and the deferral of increases faced by those businesses losing transitional relief from 1 April 2009. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and others have raised the question of empty property reliefs. I am sure that hon. Members will recognise that, previously, landlords had no incentive to find tenants for their empty properties. As a result, rents in UK cities ended up being higher than they might otherwise have been. That is why we removed many of the exemptions and reliefs for empty properties. To reintroduce such a relief would cost as much £950 million a year, which would have to be found from other areas of taxation or through public spending cuts.