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Business Rate Supplements Bill

All that needs to be said has been said about the very unsatisfactory situation in which we find ourselves, coming towards half way through Committee by the end of today without the promised guidance. I feel pretty confident that no one present today is directly responsible for that delay; it is just unfortunate that the Minister has to bear the brunt of explaining why we are in that unsatisfactory situation. We look forward to receiving the guidance within a day or so and regret that the Government have been so distracted during the past week that they have not managed to produce it by Monday instead of Wednesday. I was of course interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, had to say and his declaration of interests. It struck me that the most important of them, although it was not strictly a declaration, was that he was responsible for nationalising the business rate—something that Labour was committed to repealing but for which we are still waiting. I seem to recall that he was a prominent part of an Administration that got rid of one whole tier of government in London at a sweep. Had that prevailed, we would have lost the argument today.