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Business Rate Supplements Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest, somewhat improbably as someone who has never worked within the City of London, as an honorary fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute. I am going to take the liberty of quoting briefly from its most recent quarterly Investment Management Review, in an article entitled "Devastation in Shipping". It states: ""The scale of the drop is manifest in two separate statistics. The Baltic Dry Index, the index of shipping costs for dry bulk commodities (iron ore, coal, graphite and grains), fell to a 22-year low of 663 on 22 December, a 95% drop from its all-time high of 11,793 in May. The cost of chartering a Cape-size ship fell from $235,000 a day at the peak of the market to just $2,300 a day in early December … Since December, there has been a bounce, as China has re-entered the market in a limited way. By early February, the Baltic Dry Index had doubled from its December low, to 1498, and the cost of hiring a Cape-size ship had multiplied ""10 times to $26,500 a day, compared with its low of $2,300. Needless to say, in spite of this impressive recovery, it only represents one-ninth of the peak reached in the early part of 2008. Notwithstanding this bounce from extreme lows, continued recovery is not expected by industry insiders"." Those two paragraphs are an index of the scale of the problem that is facing ports at the present time. I, too, have had representations such as my noble friend, Lord Bates, reflected in his intervention. I shall not delay your Lordships’ House with the details at such a time, after my noble friend’s eloquence, but for the businesses that have written to think that it is worth while raising these issues with me, who has no background in this matter, is an index of their seriousness. If, despite all this, the Government regard this matter as a storm in a teacup, as was implied by the Minister in Committee, we are, of course, all aware that Lord Sugar, as he not yet is, is riding to the aid of SMEs and I hope that we can be confident, on issues like this, that, if the sugar gets into the teacup, it will be—to coin the phrase—shaken and not simply stirred. I support my noble friend’s amendment.