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Business Rate Supplements Bill

My hon. Friend takes a particular interest in transport matters, and he is absolutely right. The Bill comes at a time when ports are already under pressure from the fall in freight rates. Businesses are therefore already being heavily squeezed. Business in the ports on what are sometimes called the near sea routes is particularly threatened because major concerns such as DFDS Seaways have indicated that, unless there is a change to these measures, they will reconsider their significant investment in the UK. That would be a massive blow to economies, including to the partnership between local authorities and business in areas that are trying to regenerate. It is entirely plausible that operations would be moved to Rotterdam or Antwerp and the goods simply brought in by road thereafter. The transhipments would happen elsewhere. That would ironically benefit local authorities and businesses in continental Europe and significantly damage businesses and the local authorities that work with them in our port towns. That is why this issue is so important and why we make no apology for returning to it again and again. It is also, I suspect, why the amendment was so closely and well argued in the other place and carried by such a large majority. I thus genuinely appeal to the Minister at this late stage in the game to rip up her departmental brief, stand back and look at the issue as a matter of fairness and justice. Compared with the sums of money pumped out into some sectors, scrapping the unfair retrospective element would be nothing at all and it would help to create the degree of certainty that was mentioned in our debate on earlier amendments. The Minister should do that to provide a proper basis for the partnership working between local authorities and business that she identified as central to the Bill. Let me end on a final irony. A number of local authorities want to be sympathetic and have tried to hold back from collecting the business rate that they are obliged to collect, but they are now being pressured by the same Government to start enforcement and start collecting. I know that some deals are being done, but that is a drop in the ocean, as the vast majority of people are going to be hit with liabilities that they cannot reasonably meet. That will positively harm the exact premise of the Bill—local authorities and businesses working together to regenerate their areas. I ask the Minister, who is up to now untarnished by this whole unhappy saga, not to listen to the official line, but to apply basic common sense and justice and support the Lords amendment. She should go to the Chancellor, who may have the strength of flexibility and independence, and ask for justice to be done.