Business Rates

Debate between Bob Stewart and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will have heard the plea from those of us who represent rural areas, where the one or two ATMs in our market towns play a very significant part.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend have any idea of the logic behind an ATM on the outside wall of a bank having to pay business rates when those that are inside do not? It beats me! Perhaps there is a reason, but I do not understand what it would be.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I understand that there are two reasons. The first is that the Valuation Office Agency can get away with saying that an ATM on the outside of the building is, in the jargon, a different hereditament from the main building on which it sits. The second argument that is given in the official explanation is that ATMs are often not run by the same company as the building on which they sit, and that as it is a different company, it can be rated as such. Those are the official explanations, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister, who is far more expert in these matters than I am, will be able to give us a better one.

Returning to the £51,000 and the question of discretionary relief as opposed to allowances, the Minister knows that this is the core of my speech. It was the core of my speech last October, and it is the core of my speech today. This £51,000 is still a discretionary relief. While the majority of local councils have now pledged to provide the resources for their local businesses to benefit from this change, there are some that, regrettably, have not been forthcoming with their support of this measure, either by delaying their decision to implement it or by putting systems in place that require businesses to apply for the relief, firmly putting the onus on businesses to take time out from their day job to claim back money that is rightfully theirs. That means that businesses in those areas are being disadvantaged.

Of course this still does not resolve the complexity, and I believe that simplicity is always the key. We all know that small businesses are under increasing and unfair pressure from out-of-town retail parks and online retailers, and I am sure that Members here tonight will have lots of examples of that. For example, for every £1 in business rates that our small high street operators are taxed, the big online and out-of-town retailers pay significantly less, averaging around 16p. We can immediately see the competitive disadvantage for high street retailers, compared with the large out-of-town retailers and big online organisations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend, along with most of my hon. Friends, if not every single Member who is in the Chamber, is passionate about defending small businesses. I can see that she is shortly going to make a speech to support her small businesses—perhaps very shortly; I cannot possibly foretell.

[Bob Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Yes, because my hon. Friend has been very patient.

[Bob Stewart]

As a small factual correction, when my hon. Friend said “5.7 small and medium-sized businesses” he meant 5.7 million. That is a small point, and I know it was a slip of the lip.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Indeed it was a slip of a lip. The figure of 5.7 million small and medium-sized businesses is terrific, and shows the entrepreneurialism in this country, which is why our economy is doing so well and why we have such full employment at present.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because that gives me the opportunity yet again to praise what the Fire Service College is doing in Moreton-in-Marsh. It is a large establishment on about 600 acres. It is on an old airfield, and it includes a runway used as a practice motorway on which motorway pile-ups can be simulated using real scrapped cars, so that the police, fire and ambulance services can then train in a big joint exercise. The college has offices they set on fire, and the police, fire and ambulance services can use that to train. It also has a ship it can set on fire. It has all sorts of huge facilities.

[Bob Stewart]

On a runway?

Managing Flood Risk

Debate between Bob Stewart and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Before I held the public meetings I found that each agency was shuffling responsibility off to one of the other agencies. It is essential that all agencies and all tools in the box are unleashed to try to solve these flooding problems.

The meetings have produced results in parts of my constituency, but there is still a lot to be done. In particular, problems with sewage flooding arise because the sewerage systems are very old. The moment we have any sort of flooding the water table rises, water gets into the sewerage system, and the pumps are incapable of removing the sewage from people’s houses, leading to very difficult issues. I will be encouraging Ofwat to take a greater interest in this subject—indeed, I will invite it to my public meetings—to see whether we can encourage Thames Water to carry out what it says it will, and invest more in our sewers.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

One problem seems to be that there is no way we can control the water table from going up and down. That is a severe problem, and there does not seem to be a technical solution to sorting it out. That is happening in my constituency more and more.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree with my hon. Friend that whether or not climate change is taking place and is caused by human activity, there is no doubt that we are getting an increased number of events with increased rain intensity, and we must therefore have better defences against flooding. There is no reason in the 21st-century why we cannot have sewerage systems that cope with such events. In particular, as I shall come on to say, we need sewerage systems that will cope with new development, which often adds to existing problems.

There is a perception that the residents of the Cotswolds, who live 100 miles away from London but who are still in the Thames Water area, are getting a very poor deal. It is outrageous that all Thames Water customers will be charged an additional £70 to £80 a year for at least 10 years to pay for the huge Thames tideway tunnel, when we in the Cotswolds cannot get the increased investment we need to deal with sewage flooding. The regulator Ofwat has to look at that. The time for talking in the Cotswolds is over. Thames Water has had more than enough time to carry out all its design work. We need more sewerage investment.

Equally, we need the Environment Agency to take the lead in planning how to deal with catchment areas. An exchange took place with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The answer is not just dredging, but considering the whole catchment area using all the keys in our locker to deal with the problem. That is what I am asking the EA to do in my constituency. For at least three years, it has been talking about coming up with an upper River Churn catchment area plan, but I have still yet to see that plan. Not only do we need to see adequate investment from the EA to deal with river flooding problems, we need to encourage Thames Water to invest adequately to tackle sewerage problems.

On new developments, we have, unfortunately, seen a rash of developers in my constituency. I accept that we all need new houses because the population is rising, but we need—I say this most emphatically to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench—new houses in the right areas. If we build houses on floodplains we cannot complain when we get subsequent problems. In South Cerney, for example, a recently passed new development is right next door to an estate that has had sewerage flooding problems. How daft is that? Fairford and Lechlade have each seen new developments passed for developments to be built on the floodplain. That is also daft.

We need to examine the system we have at the moment. The Environment Agency is a statutory consultee for large investment, but it has to take into account only one-in-100-year events when considering whether a development on a floodplain is viable. That is completely unrealistic and should rapidly be brought down to a design phase of one-in-25-year events. The statutory water undertaker, Thames Water, is not even a statutory consultee; it is consulted by the local planning authority often only as a matter of principle. Even then, all it has to do is to say that the sewerage system is capable of being connected to the new development, not whether the new development will make existing sewage flooding worse or whether the sewer needs upgrading. This is a legal grey area. Thames Water has been taken to court several times for trying to exceed its powers. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: for goodness’ sake let us look at this and try to get the legal framework correct.

An even more important aspect of the planning system is drainage: sustainable drainage systems. We are building up for ourselves a huge and unknown liability from the lack of proper design of drainage systems. Currently, the local planning authority monitors the drainage system for a new development. Developers, with plenty of funds behind them, employ clever drainage engineers who take their percolation tests in the summer when everything is nice and dry—when, of course, the drainage works properly—instead of being made to take them in the winter when the water table is high. They then ask the developer for a section 106 payment. Often, that payment is inadequate. Under the Water Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton knows, SUDS will have to be licensed by the county council. Until that happens, we have a huge and unknown liability from SUDS, which are often completely inadequate and designed for one-in-100-year events. I say again that they should be designed for one-in-25-year events. We should not be building willy-nilly on the floodplain without thinking seriously about what we are doing.

A lot of my constituents have difficulty getting insurance. The new Government Flood Re system will not cover houses built after 2009, so, in relation to all recent applications where houses have been built on the floodplain, we are creating a problem for ourselves. They will undoubtedly flood at some stage, yet the owners of those houses will not be able to get flood insurance.

I welcome the Government’s efforts to ensure that everyone who buys a house on a floodplain is aware of having done so, but it is one thing for people to be aware of it during the sunny summer months when they buy their houses, and a completely different thing for them to be aware of it in the winter, when the rain falls in bucketfuls.