Business Rate Supplements Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his attempts to move me, at least. I remember with nostalgia the days before NNDR, when we did not have to have a consultation with business rate payers. That was made statutory as soon as local authorities had no say whatever over the level of rate, which always seemed to me somewhat bizarre and, to them, even more pointless. However, I digress. As the Minister said, we have covered fairly exhaustively all the points in this debate, but I should just like to comment on where we have got to. The Minister spent part of his speech taking issue with the use of the word "threat". I understand why, and in a way I very much share his view, but the fact that that word came from, if I may say so, another friend of the Bill—a qualified friend but a friend none the less—is an exact illustration of my point that we need to provide reassurance for businesses in statute. The language should reflect the way that they feel about this and there is a need for reassurance. Should the vote be mandatory? That is the thrust of my amendment and it is what I believe should happen. As the noble Lord, Lord Bates, pointed out, we are not talking here about every small business that happens to have a business premises or a huge exercise involving balloting every NNDR payer. I took the trouble to find out how many business rate payers would be affected in my own London borough. It is a smallish, outer London borough. It is not a huge centre of business but it has a fair number of businesses. In the London Borough of Sutton, 429 businesses would require to be balloted. I recognise that my local authority would not want to be engaged in something completely disproportionate but, on the other hand, we need to be clear and to understand that we are not talking about a huge, complex and vastly expensive exercise involving a ballot of a large number of people. As I said, in a borough with a little over 4,000 NNDR payers, we are talking about 10 per cent, which I understand to be fairly typical across the country. I want to ask the House to agree to my Motion. If it is agreed, no doubt there will be further discussions. That was the tenor of what I was saying and, for the reasons that I have stated, I should like to test the opinion of the House. Division on Motion A1 Contents 122; Not-Contents 127. Motion A1 disagreed. Motion A agreed.