My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions and I will certainly seek to answer the questions where I can. If there are certain questions that I am unable to answer, I shall write to noble Lords in this regard.
On some of the questions of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and first on the effect of the 50% disregard, it is disregarded for the purposes of the levy and safety
net. The levy and safety net are not affected by the 50% disregard. The noble Lord also asked me to confirm the status with the issues around the 40% and the 80%. I am happy to confirm that the 40% to which I referred is indeed 80% of the 50% of the local share. I trust that that makes sense. If it does not, I am sure that the noble Lord will let me know, if not today, then later on.
He also asked about the extent of class A to class B and how that is determined in terms of factors. Local government will work with the Valuation Office Agency to identify classes A and B. Class A sites are the typical shale gas sites and class B covers combined new sites where shale gas is also present. I believe that he also asked a general question about the issue of appeals. As I am sure that the noble Lord recognises, there is a high number of business rate appeals, and they take too long to resolve. During the 2010 rating list there were 641,000 appeals that had been received, and as of September 2014 532,000 of these had been resolved. In the Autumn Statement 2013, the Government committed to resolve 95% of the 168,000 appeals outstanding as of 30 September 2013 by July 2015. As of September 2014 this figure had fallen to 52,000. While I welcome the broad support of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, he had a number of questions. I would like to pick up specifically on these matters and write to him.