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Business Rate Supplements Bill

I support Lords amendments 11 and 12. It is unusual to find myself in such agreement with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), but he put the case very powerfully and effectively and I support it. Unless we sustain these amendments by voting against the Government—it gives me no pleasure to do so—we will expose the Humberside ports and those in Liverpool and elsewhere to a very serious and messy situation in which firms will go bankrupt, people will be laid off, and jobs and businesses will be lost. I am not prepared to support the Government in their proposals to carry that through. Lords amendment 11 is designed to rectify the disastrous situation caused by the retrospective rate demands issued to port operators—I emphasise that this applies to port operators, not port owners, who received a rebate on their business rates. It was the port operators who became eligible for separate assessment for business rates in 2005. The Valuation Office Agency tells us that that has been done. It went around to make the assessments, but it talked to the owners, not the operators. It did not give any notice; there was no consultation, which there should be have been, on raising the business rates. The assessment was based on what owners told the valuation agency about liability for business rates. Separate assessment was the principle that came in for port operators in 2005, and the valuation agency told us that it had been done. Suddenly, however, thanks to a case in Southampton—it was settled out of court to avoid a definitive verdict against the agency—it was necessary to look at the assessments all over again. Many of these businesses were not assessed until 2008 for an assessment that should have been made in 2005. Whose fault was that? It was manifestly the fault of Government and the Valuation Office Agency. Perhaps the agency was understaffed because the Gershon economies had required it to shed labour, but in any event this was the fault of the agency rather than of the port operators, who have already paid business rates through what is known as the cumulo rental system. The business rate was part of the rent paid to the port owner, which is Associated British Ports in the case of the Humberside ports. What the port operators are being asked to do is pay rates twice. Not only is it a sacred principle that everyone must pay business rates; in the case of the ports, everyone must pay business rates twice. It is inconceivable that such a principle should be imposed, and that it should be defended by the Minister. Indeed, a succession of Ministers have presented us with this ludicrous line of defence. The whole thing was handled very clumsily and ineptly by the Valuation Office Agency. Assessments were rushed in at the last minute in 2008. Many of those assessments are now being reviewed through the so-called fast-track procedure, which takes several weeks. We do not know how many are being reviewed, but although—as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out—local authorities are now being pressurised into demanding the rates, they cannot be levied until the fast-track assessments have been completed. I do not object to individual year-by-year assessments of these businesses. What I do object to, strenuously, is the retrospective demand for three and a half years of business rates, dating back to 2005. How will that be possible? The businesses have already charged their customers—a process that often involves intense haggling. They cannot go back to their customers and say "We are sorry, but we will have to increase the charges."