Local Government Finance

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

The noble Lord said it so nicely, he will almost be able to go on the stage and do Tommy Cooper, but I am sure he does not really want to do that.

At the outset I remind the noble Lord that local government finance is at the level that it is because of the disastrous deficit that had to be met. Local government has had to take its share of that. The noble Lord knows that if a Labour Government had come into power, they too would have had to make very substantial reductions. Local government would have been left facing very similar problems and decisions to reflect those reductions.

The compensation system will be the tariffs and the top-ups. The expectation is that the control totals that are in place at the moment for the four-year spending review will stay in place. However, with the retention of the business rate, as the noble Lord has rightly said, some areas will have a far higher business rate than others and will be able to generate more. At the start, the tariff will be set at the level of those that have higher rates; the expectation is that, above that, money will be taken off and passed to those in the poorest areas. There will be a sort of balancing between them.

The noble Lord asked how there would be growth. The rate will encourage local government to talk to businesses and encourage the development of businesses, because they will be able to retain some of the extra rate that comes from that. I hope that that answers the noble Lord’s questions.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I, too, like my noble friend Lord Tope, warmly welcome the main thrust of what is proposed in this consultation paper. Like him, I admire my noble friend’s refusal to try to answer the questions that are asked in the consultation paper. We are very grateful for the repetition of the Statement; indeed, it reads very well.

I have two points to make. I was the Secretary of State who introduced the nationalisation, as it has been called, of the business rate. One has to remember what lay behind that—namely, that 20 years ago we examined the question of the local authorities and who paid, who benefited and who voted. This was not a coterminous group, although there were some overlaps of course, but businesses, particularly small businesses, felt that they were being overcharged by local authorities fixing the rate to get the benefit of the revenue so that they could provide extra benefits for those who voted but who perhaps did not contribute any rates. That is what my noble friend has to avoid. What has been proposed in this consultation paper goes a long way towards that; it was very reassuring when she said that the business rate would still be set nationally and that it would not be open to local authorities to change that. While one would like to feel that setting the rate could make it more responsive to business requirements, the fact of the matter is that we had many years of experience of that and it did not work.

The one point on which I disagree with my noble friend Lord Tope is that I hope that the Government are not tempted to go down the road of letting local authorities fix the business rate themselves. They do not vote and yet they would be asked to pay what might be quite substantial sums. Indeed, when I had to deal with local authorities, they were asked to raise very substantial sums. I just issue that warning to my noble friend.

I end by saying that I think this is a valuable first step. I am not sure that I will take the Green Paper away with me during the Recess, as I have a number of other papers to read as well, but I look forward to studying the paper, particularly when some of the details, which my noble friend said would be published later, are available.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, my noble friend was a much respected Secretary of State. I still remember the reasons why business rates were centralised. There is no intention of allowing local government to set the business rate; businesses will in effect see no change. The business rate itself will be set nationally, as it is; the discounts, the valuations and the rates that are paid will be the same, so in effect they will be unaffected. However, the area in which we hope and expect to see change is in encouraging local authorities to make sure that they are well in tune with their local businesses, that they try to see their businesses grow and that enterprise and employment follows from that. If business grows, local authorities will be able to benefit from that. I hope my noble friend will understand that the business rate will be as he put it—set nationally.