---

Business Rate Supplements Bill

I shall speak also to Amendments 61A and 61C. Amendment 58 relates to the abandonment of a project and to collection and enforcement in that situation. I seek to take out the provision that the Secretary of State may prescribe the date when the BRS is treated as having come to an end. I believe that that should be a matter for local authority discretion, and my amendment simply asks the Minister to justify the Secretary of State’s role. Amendment 61A is an amendment to Schedule 2 and was prompted by the Minister’s letter following the first day of Committee. The letter, for which I thank her very much, dealt with BRS refunds. At 4.56 pm on Thursday, having just received the letter, I dictated this little amendment. I am sure that it is not very good but it gives me the scope to ask whether there can be, as she seemed to imply, no circumstances where a refund is desirable or proper before the end of a project. When we debated refunds on the previous Committee day, I was aware that there are provisions for refunds at the end of a project. However, it has occurred to me that there might be circumstances where a refund is appropriate part-way through a project—for example, if there is a bit of stop-go. I may be told that the right thing there will be to vary the amount of the BRS in a subsequent year. I do not know whether paragraph 3(1)(a) of Schedule 2 relates to the BRS for a particular year or to the BRS coming to an end. I am not clear what that means. It does not seem a natural reading to relate it to a particular year within a number of years. Finally, as regards Amendment 61C, if I have read Clause 24(7) correctly, the cancellation does not apply where a BRS has come to an end. Does that mean that if the Secretary of State cancels the BRS at a particular date, a rate payer who has failed to pay the BRS due before that date is able to avoid paying? I hope that is a clear question even if my introduction to the amendment was a little garbled. Clause 24(7) reads to me as though it might be possible to avoid enforcement simply because the BRS has ended. I beg to move.