My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving such a detailed reply at this time of night. I thank the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton and Lord Smith of Leigh, for their contributions and for filling in a lot of the detail that it was not possible to give in my introduction.
My meeting with the Minister’s officials was entirely satisfactory, save for the fact that it did not give me the answer that I thought I should have derived from it—but that is par for the course; one accepts that. I understand that the particular meeting to which I referred took place last Wednesday. The Minister—it was not the noble Baroness but one of her colleagues
from another place—who had originally been destined to be there for half an hour or so, was there for two minutes and 40 seconds. Just one of the representative bodies got a question in and was more or less told, “Well, it’s a done deal and that’s it”. That seemed to be the end of the conversation, which was not really satisfactory for people coming along and explaining the situation from a business standpoint.
It does not give businesses any comfort to know that the report by Sir Michael Lyons is to be left on the scrapheap because it was commissioned by a previous Government who did not implement it. These things are done with much fine intellect and great skill is applied to them, and they should be taken at face value. I say from these Benches that if businesses are just going to be subjected to the idea of the thing being of no consequence because it is politically inconvenient or political point-scoring, that does not do anything for growth or infrastructure. It does not do anything for businesses or business confidence because all this politicking switches businesses off; they do not operate on that basis.
The Valuation Office Agency’s data were fine in their own terms, but it was how they were interpreted thereafter and the claims made for them that were not substantiated. It would have been better if they had never been prayed in aid at all. The Gerald Eve analysis of the figures—produced by the Valuation Office Agency, not by Gerald Eve; they were a reworking of the Valuation Office Agency’s own figures—have to this day not been challenged or countermanded in any sense. The political overlay is a matter of dismay to many businesses.
The cost of occupation is directly related to jobs. If we are all in this together, and somebody in the Treasury or wherever in the Government is saying, “Well, we’re not going to have this thing, because, in fact, we don’t want any sort of wobbles on the transition to the Local Government Finance Act arrangements and the business rates retention scheme and all that sort of thing”, that is fine, but it would be just as well if that were said outright and then we would all know where we were.
There does not appear to be any other reason for that. With the greatest respect to what the noble Baroness said, I do not believe that the figures add up in the way that she said. I do not believe that there are 800,000 gainers. I do not see that in the figures there. It is an allocation of a large proportion of “don’t knows”, and that is not the same thing at all. Obviously the noble Baroness is entirely dependent in these things on the information that is provided by her department but there is a great deal of concern about the information, what it means and what is being claimed of it. Different interpretations are being attached to things that should have a straightforward meaning to everybody. This is a problem that we need to address.
10.30 pm
The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, said that it breaks with convention. Yes, it sets a precedent. If this goes through in the Bill, it will be something that is variable according to the whim or fancy of any subsequent Administration for whatever reason. It will accelerate the number of appeals, it will increase the mutterings of dissatisfaction and pressure for much more radical change, and it is likely to increase pressures in relation to investment, particularly in areas that are really struggling and have been hit quite badly both in terms of the turnover that they can generate and the values of the premises. The downward spiral is never at all comfortable for occupiers, landlords or anybody else. That needs to be recognised because this will produce further changes in our high streets and further challenges that we have to deal with. The hour is late and, while I may well return to this at a future date, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.