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Business Rate Supplements Bill

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the support that I have had for this amendment from all parts of the House, except of course from the Government Front Bench. I start, at once, by being most grateful for the apology that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, gave; I realise that Ministers may, in the past few days, have had other things on their minds than following up points from Committee. However, the issue remains: the word "unlikely" has caused a good deal of unhappiness in the House. It is good that the Minister has said that the issue will be pursued and examined further. I wonder whether, in the course of that examination, he or whoever it would be might receive a deputation from the City of London—accompanied, perhaps, by some companies that have been asked to make and have considered making voluntary contributions to Crossrail—so that this could be discussed not only with Ministers in the DCLG but, perhaps, with officials from the Revenue. That would be a helpful way forward, and it might help the Minister to achieve the objective that I think he is anxious to achieve, without prejudicing the generality of the fiscal treatment of companies in these circumstances. I am happy to give way if the Minister says that he would be prepared to do that.