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Business Rate Supplements Bill

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I hesitate to say this in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, whom I wish extremely well in whatever unknown circumstances she now is, but I recall, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, will recall, having attended the Committee and remaining stages of Bills over which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, presided, that at the time of the housing Bill, I allowed myself the comment on the very day that the Governor of the Bank of England was suggesting for the first time that there was a possibility that we might be in a recession, that those remarks sat somewhat forbiddingly over the optimism which the noble Baroness, Baroness Andrews, was expressing about the economy at the present time, and we returned to it later in one of the Bills this year. I do recall on that occasion that her defence of her position was that there was not a recession occurring at that moment. I entirely endorse, therefore, the remarks of my noble friend Lord Bates that in so many of these areas we are looking at legislation which was being carved out and conceived in much more favourable economic times than we are now enjoying, and it is a mistake if we carry on thinking that in fact all is going to be well, when at the moment there is still no dramatic evidence that that is so.