Draft Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention: Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention: Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024.

Mr Vickers, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning. I should begin by con-gratulating each and every one of you, the members of this Committee, for so annoying your Whips Office that you were appointed to this Delegated Legislation Committee. It is probably the most fun you will have today. If this was not on the Committee’s bucket list, I do not know what was.

I detect that there is no sign of a division between the two Front-Bench teams today. I could dilate at some length about the business rates retention scheme. I am of course happy to take Members’ questions. I am inclined to say that these proceedings are a piece of housekeeping, which has to be done because it has to be done.

I apologise to colleagues who have, tantalisingly, controlled their expectation of serving on this Committee on at least one occasion, when we had to withdraw it. Let me explain: I will carry the blame for this. There was, in one bit of the formula, a misplaced bracket. Never in the history of misplaced brackets has so much potential disaster been averted by putting it in the right place. On the second occasion, we had the peculiar problem whereby we made the judgment of leaving a blank space where there was no data to put in, only to be advised by somebody or other in the House that that could be frightfully confusing, and that therefore adding a zero to confuse the mind still further was an important thing to do.

The business rates retention scheme is governed by seven principles. Those are set out in the regulations. This is helpful to local government and helpful to business. I could detain the Committee for a very long time reading the wonderful piece of Shakespearean prose that has been put before me. I read it in bed last night, and I have never had a better night’s sleep, having woken up with my box on my lap. Given that it is a technical, housekeeping point, and given that, amongst others, myhon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare has always advised me that the most popular Minister is the one who spends the least time discussing non-contentious, technical, housekeeping issues—echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison)—I commend the regulations to the Committee.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and to attend the Committee this morning. I am happy to confirm that the Opposition do not wish to divide the Committee on this matter, which we believe to be technical. Very much in the spirit of the Minister, I do not propose to go into a lot of detail, but it is important to say that business rates retention is a fundamental foundation stone of many devolution deals that have been agreed. The thrust towards devolution is not just about devolving power; it is also about devolving fiscal responsibility, and enabling areas to benefit from growth in that local area. However, any system of course needs floors and ceilings, to ensure that councils can afford to run their services. That is what this technical instrument is about.

As the Minister says, there has been a delay in tabling. I accept that stray brackets and commas and zeroes play some part in this—we have all had that experience in the past—but it is a matter of fact that we are now four months on from when we expected the instrument to be tabled, so it is legitimate to ask, have there been any financial winners or losers during that time, and will the Government compensate on that basis?

[Simon Hoare]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that no one has disproportionately won or disproportionately lost. This is timely. It was a singular bracket that was misplaced, rather than a pluralised bracket; I can assure him of that. Every comma was in the right place, ditto semi-colons. Nobody has had extra money that now has to be clawed back, and nobody has had less money which we then have to dole out.

[Jim McMahon]

That is a fundamental point and I am grateful for that early clarification. In that spirit I do not want to give advice—indeed, I am not strictly qualified to give advice to others—but I will say, in the spirit of statutory instruments of this nature, that perhaps not allowing the good to be the enemy of the perfect means that we can get through some of this process a bit more quickly and give local authorities the certainty that they need in order to ascertain their financial position.

[Simon Hoare]

I know this sounds bonkers, but if we had proceeded with the SI with the bracket in the wrong place, it would have led to miscalculations of the sums that we are talking about. So we made a judgment that this was not an arcane case of the perfect defeating the good; this was a rather important decision to take. We did not take it lightly, but we thought it better from local authorities’ perspective to get it right, rather than having to come back and ask for extra money, or dole out extra money, thereby sowing the seeds of confusion.

[Jim McMahon]

My final question for the Minister in his winding-up speech will be to ask where the Government are up to on the wider reset of business rates that the sector is waiting for.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I am grateful to the members of the Committee for the forensic dissection of this piece of legislation. Let me answer the outstanding question from my good friend, my shadow. In due course, the way in which local government is funded, both from council tax subvention and from business rates, will have to be reviewed, and it will have to be done in the round. I think the hon. Gentleman is on exactly the same page on that. There is an opportunity for cross-party working, to give the sector, in the widest sense of that definition, the greatest possible security and certainty.

To conclude, this is a highly technical set of regulations. They are necessary to ensure that the rates retention scheme continues to operate as it should and as we would like it to. I hope and believe that the Committee will join me in that assessment.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention: Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024.