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Business Rate Supplements Bill

I was under the impression that I had just said that, but it is indeed true. The operators have been asked to pay business rates twice, and there is no justification for that. If the Minister does not abandon her opposition to the Lords amendment and say "My God, Grimsby, you are right; I never thought of that," I should like her to tell us how the port operators are to be compensated for the money that they paid in business rates for the period between 2005 and 2008. What will happen to that money? The owner, ABP, has received a full rebate for the money that was paid by the operators, which is ludicrous, and it now says that it will not give the money to the operators because it is ABP's money and it must run businesses itself. The operators are being threatened with retrospective business rate bills which they cannot pay because they cannot increase their charges retrospectively, and asking them to do so would be bad business practice. The Government, recognising guiltily that they have made a mess of things, are exceptionally allowing the operators to pay over a period of eight years, but that will be of no great benefit, because the debt must go on the balance sheets, and if the balance sheets suggest insolvency, the businesses will be operating while insolvent. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out, if insolvency threatens, investment will fail. DFDS has already announced its intention of cutting investment. The ports will change. Will the cars still come in through Grimsby—the great car port of the western world—or go out from Grimsby, for that matter, or will the operators change the way they do things and bring them in by other means? That is quite possible. We will certainly have the shedding of jobs and the closure of businesses. Freshney Cargo Services has been much cited in recent debates, and was cited again today—this time accurately, I was glad to note. That firm's very existence is threatened. Those of us who oppose this regime have had two Adjournment debates and endless meetings with previous Ministers. We have been very well received and we put our case, but the Ministers were all junior Ministers—we never got to see the Chancellor or the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who are the deciding forces—and they told us, "As junior Ministers, our hands are tied." It is the job of junior Ministers to defend the indefensible, and they have done that very well, but there have been no concessions at all—we are beating our heads against a brick wall. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) pointed out, that is what Ministers get the car for. Our warnings about the disaster that will come have made no impression at all. It is now going to hit us, but all we have had is a litany of excuses such as that if the retrospective rates demand were waived it would be an inappropriate aid to industry, and it would break a sacred principle of the ratings system in respect of retrospective charges. We have been told that the businesses, many of them small businesses, should have known—by divination or telepathy or some other form of spirit medium—that they would have to pay these charges. A load of rubbish has been told to us. We are in the position of mushrooms, with manure regularly thrown over us by junior Ministers of the Departments concerned. Frankly, I am fed up of being in that position and of talking about a situation that is so serious and of having Ministers take no notice. We had another Minister take no notice today; a new Minister adopted the old skills of taking no notice of the case. The principle the Lords amendment proposes is a simple one, and it already operates. That principle is that where there is a reassessment that comes at the volition of the valuation agency and not the business, there will not be retrospective charging of that reassessment. That is a good and sensible principle, because what we have here is an inefficient agency with tyrannical powers, including the power to impose a large retrospective payment. It should not be allowed to use those tyrannical powers in defence of its own inefficiency. That is a good principle. The Minister told us today that the increase is not backdated if the error relates to premises on the list, but is backdated if the error relates to premises that should have been entered on the list. The premises in question should have been entered on the list in 2005, so this is double-talk. They could be exempted from the retrospective payment, and this Lords amendment suggests that they must be. The Government could have done that of their own accord. Why did they not do so, and thereby save us all this trouble? Why did they impose this retrospective assessment that is causing so much trouble in the ports? The Government have the power; they should have used it. For the Minister to tell us, "Well, the premises should have been entered on the list," is no excuse. Why were they not on the list, and what was their legal status? The owners of the premises were paying business rates; they were assessed for business rates separately in 2005, so why cannot this retrospective abolition of the retrospective principle be applied to them, as it should be? What is their situation? The Minister told us that if we carried the amendment, it would have no effect. It is clearly not a retrospective amendment, but I will not believe it if I am told that if the Government accepted this principle—as they should, because that principle is in the legislation already—they would not retrospectively give way in the port operators' case. They would, of course. They would obviously accept the general principle, and they would have to do justice even though the crime is only three months or so old. It is futile for the Minister to tell us that this measure would have no effect, because it would; even though the legislation is not retrospective, it would allow the abolition of the principle of retrospective demands for rates. The state of these businesses is shown by some of the correspondence that has been sent to us by one of the lawyers advising us on this issue. He says:""I was telephoned on Thursday by the accountant of one of the…businesses affected by the failures of the Valuation Office Agency. The accountant wanted to know the effect of the vote in the House of Lords"." The effect of the Lords amendment was, of course, zero; it is not until we ratify it that it becomes effective, so this accountant is hanging on for today's vote, in which we shall compel the Government to accept the Lords amendment. The correspondence continues by saying that the accountant""was trying to decide whether he was obliged to qualify the company's account with a note that it"—" the dock operator, one of several in such a position—""was insolvent. He felt that he was obliged to do so but was desperately trying to find a reason not to qualify the accounts"." We are told he did not want to complete the process by reporting the company insolvent. Like all of us, he is waiting for the relief of Mafeking, when the Minister will tell us that she accepts the principle of what we are saying and he can tell that company that it can continue to trade. The Labour party and the Government must accept this principle, because we cannot pursue these port operators in this fashion and produce the kind of devastating effect that this measure will have in the ports. We are not exaggerating: there will be very serious consequences. I wrote to the Minister—we have never been able to see one of the top Ministers—asking that this Lords amendment be accepted. I also wrote to her asking that we should be provided with accurate information on how many of these port operators have paid, how many are still paying and how many have negotiated entry into the eight-year scheme. I have not received an answer. I do not think that the information is available. Ministers have tried to con us by saying, "A high proportion have paid. If some pay, we can't abandon the charges on the rest." That just ain't true. We are talking about a unique category: port operators, who, under the new arrangements, are assessed for retrospective business rates. We need to know how many of them have paid. I hope that the Minister will tell us, because we can make these decisions only on the basis of that kind of information. I hope that if the Minister does not accept this amendment—I have been watching the flow of notes coming from the hard-faced men and women in the Box—