Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for not being present at the outset of the debate. I want to make a few brief points.

Let me echo some of the points made by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) in her commendably succinct contribution to the debate—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

And powerful.

[Mr Jackson]

The right hon. Gentleman admonishes me. It was powerful and eloquent. The hon. Lady has great experience in local government in Dorset and she added to the debate.

It is timely to remember the basis on which business rates were centralised. I do not want to go too much into the history, but there was a significant degree of criticism of the decision of the previous Conservative Government to centralise business rates. There was an historical context, however, given what happened in too many of our large municipalities under the metropolitan district councils, particularly in the midlands and the north of England. The local councils had a mandate, and I accept that, and were elected by local ratepayers—later council tax payers—but they often used that mandate to attack the policies of central Government. One way they did that was by significantly increasing business rates, which were then localised, above the rate of inflation.

The Government had to choose what to do about that fiscal weapon, used disproportionately by Labour councils, and its impact on regeneration, growth, business development and entrepreneurship in the areas where it was used. That was the context. I am a localist—actually, I was a localist, but I am probably now a born-again centralist. However, I was then a localist.

I must not be too unkind to the right hon. Lord Heseltine, but I fear that his views on regeneration have ossified and, perhaps, stopped in about 1981. The answer to every question for Lord Heseltine involves banging the table, big figures, big organisations and big macho approaches to local government, but that does not always reflect the nuances of the different power structures and checks and balances in modern local government in a 21st-century country. I hope that I have not been too unkind to Lord Heseltine, but I am sure he has heard worse—[Interruption.] He speaks incredibly highly of me. He is a very talented man who created a fantastic business—