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Business Rate Supplements Bill

My Lords, I am obviously glad to hear about guidance. With regard to my Amendment 15 about the costs of maintenance and operation, any authority with its wits about it will include that information and take the consequences by way of the businesses’ response if it does not. I was seeking hard to preserve flexibility, which is why my Amendment 17 refers to, ""arrangements (if any dedicated arrangements)," and to reflect the case-by-case nature of these arrangements, to which the noble Lord has alluded. I am certainly not envisaging the BRS funding only capital construction. The noble Lord said that capital programmes would not be embarked upon without the maintenance being thought through. Oh dear, I do wish that were the case but sadly that is not always so. According to my reading, the schedule is not sufficiently extensive to cover the points that I have made. I do not want to use the word "nannying" but the noble Lord was very protective of the amount of work that ratepayers would have to do in getting to grips with the prospectus and he urged me not to add to it. However, I think that the prospectus will inevitably be complex—it will not be adequate for its purpose if it is not. As regards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, although he did not directly answer my question about whether one or two individuals could represent all businesses, I think that the implicit answer to my question was, "Yes, they can". The noble Lord is nodding and that is on the record. I am interested in the Minister’s response. He castigates the noble Lord for envisaging only a single governance model, but the noble Lord’s amendment—I am arguing against myself here—refers to the, ""governing body of any organisation"." It does not say "the organisation" but "any organisation". It then goes on to talk about being involved in the oversight of the delivery. I leapt to the defence of the noble Lord’s drafting but I do not agree with the underlying concept, which is a pity because I obviously agree with other bits of the amendment. Therefore, if he divides the House on it, although I hate doing this, I think that we have little option, as we would like to go a bit one way and a bit the other, but to stay put. However, I hear what the noble Lord says on my Amendment 15 and I beg leave to withdraw it. Amendment 15 withdrawn.