Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention, Levy and Safety Net and Levy Account: Basis of Distribution) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we would all agree with the Minister when he described the SI as highly technical. It certainly is. It demonstrates just how convoluted local government finance in this country has become. It deeply troubles me from the point of view of transparency, because I would defy anyone to try to explain what is happening here. The context is that local government is facing a funding crisis of around £1.6 billion. The local government finance system was not fit for purpose before the pandemic and most certainly is not now. I agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, about the need for a root and branch reform of local government finance.

I have one substantive point and two questions for the Minister. A rule of law accessibility issue arises in relation to this SI. The Government’s Explanatory Memorandum and the Minister mentioned that the procedure for free issue is in effect a replacement; this instrument corrects errors from earlier one. As a long-standing member of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, I applaud the Government’s use of the free issue procedure here. It is exactly what the JCSI said the Government should do.

The principle that free correction should be given was set out in the committee’s special report in 2017-19. However, that report also made the point that the Government need to consider whether the free issue procedure is necessary and serves quite the same purpose, now that so few people buy written copies. Most people go online. Here I declare an interest as a non-executive board member of the National Archives, which fulfils the role of Queen’s Printer and runs legislation.gov.uk.

In the report, the committee invited the Government to consider allowing readers of hard copies to register for email or text alerts when a statutory instrument is replaced or corrected down the line. Perhaps the Minister could go back and ask the people in government responsible for that whether they have given any more thought to this matter. The free issue procedure is one part of a whole edifice for managing SIs within a legislative and procedural framework that has been based largely on paper and not what would happen if it were starting again today.

My two questions are these. First, the Explanatory Memorandum talks about a local government working group that focuses on business rate retention and reform. Can the Minister say more about that group, who is on it and how it operates, because I have not heard of it? Secondly, are we coming close to a date for Second Reading on the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No.2) Bill, which received its first reading in March but seems to have disappeared?

It is almost 30 years since I was first elected a councillor. In 1991, as I was trudging the streets of Needham Market, one Ian Botham was on his final tour of Australia and New Zealand. Many paths lead to this House. I look forward to hearing him and wish him well.