Baroness Keeley
Main Page: Baroness Keeley (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Keeley's debates with the Leader of the House
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI commend the hon. Gentleman for his initiative in generating the debate on this matter, and indeed for what he said yesterday. The inquiries will be independent and they will be in public. I note what he has said about the specific format of the inquiries, and that will form part of the consultation process in which we are now engaged.
Last week, the Deputy Prime Minister made the following announcement at a conference in Birmingham:
“We will localise…business rates. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”
The localisation of business rates is a key policy change that could make the difference to the city of Salford of a loss of £36 million, while the City of London could gain £550 million. May we therefore have an urgent debate on the Government’s intentions for local government finance, so that Members can ask the questions that they should have been able to ask last week?
If the hon. Lady looks at the coalition agreement, she will see a clear statement of our intention to make local government finance more independent of central Government. We will be consulting in due course on the specific issue of business rates.