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Rating (Empty Properties) Bill

I will do my best to—indeed I will have to—follow your guidance. I shall turn specifically to illustrate those principles through the details of the amendment. The first few examples in proposed subsection (1A) are intended to ensure that we do not have situations that no one thought about. That is my worry with this type of broad-brush legislation. It is only when one starts discussing it that one wonders what might happen if an owner wanted to occupy a building, but could not do so because the law stopped him. Unless the Bill states specifically that in those circumstances the owner would not have to pay the tax—which he would be prepared to pay if only the law did not stop him benefiting from the occupancy of the building—I suspect that the regulations will also miss the point. I have often thought that I have had a good answer to some political point, but have then discussed it and discovered that those who come at it from a different direction are able to think of several new and difficult questions.