Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)
Mr Raynsford
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister has made a factually incorrect statement that I would not want to remain on the record without giving him the opportunity to reconsider it. I hope that he will therefore take an intervention.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The right hon. Gentleman has pointed out that he believes the Minister’s statement to be incorrect. It is up to the Minister to decide whether he wishes to give way. I do not think that he is willing to do so at this stage, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will try again.
Andrew Stunell
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the opportunity to give way will arise, and I shall certainly do so in due course to those who think that there is anything to be said against our view that the Bill represents a significant localisation for local government and local communities. The return of business rates to local authorities, the capacity to set council tax without having capping limits set by the Secretary of State, and the transfer of the benefits system to local authorities are all significant measures.
I want to restate my point about the return to local authorities of the ability to set council tax discounts. If every local authority chose to exercise the changes that are being passed into their hands, that would generate for English local authorities a total of more than £400 million. There is no direct connection in the Bill, but I want to make it clear that, whatever might be said about the proposals in the Bill, that discount change will be of significant benefit to local authorities.
I shall deal with some of the points raised in the debate. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) suggested that we ought to accept at least some of his amendments, simply because they were already in the Government’s plans. Well, it is because they are already in the Government’s plans that we do not need to accept them. Some of his other amendments were intended to dismantle the Bill and its provisions, but I made it clear that this is not just a localism measure but a component part of putting our finances right. At no point have we disguised the fact that localisation and deficit reduction are both involved in the proposals.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 6—Determination of central and local shares—
‘(1) In determining the central share and the local share for any relevant authority, the Secretary of State must have regard to—
(a) the level of need in that authority, and
(b) the likely capacity of the authority to benefit from business rate growth.
(2) Any assessment of the level of need shall include—
(a) the ranking of the local authority in the Index of Multiple Deprivation,
(b) the level of unemployment within the authority’s area,
(c) the proportion of adults within the authority’s area who have a limiting long-term illness,
(d) the number of adults within the area who are in receipt of social care,
(e) the number of looked-after children within the authority, and
(f) the level of child poverty within the authority’s area.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay his assessment before the House at the same time as the Local Government Finance Report.’.
New clause 11—National business rate policy changes: consultation—
‘The Secretary of State may not make any changes to national business rate policy which impact on local business rate yields without first consulting with all interested parties.’.
Government amendments 15 to 17.
Amendment 62, page 12, line 13, schedule 1, leave out ‘each year’ and insert—
‘each financial year until the end of the financial year beginning 1 April 2014’.
Government amendments 18 and 19.
Amendment 63, page 23, line 40, at end insert—
‘(ca) by reference to the volatility caused by rating appeals following a revaluation;’.
Government amendments 20 to 41.
Government new clause 8—Payments to and from authorities.
John Healey
I rise to speak to new clauses 1 and 11, and amendments 62 and 63.
My purpose with new clause 1 is to encourage the Minister to confirm, on behalf of the Government, that the necessary powers exist in legislation to make tax increment financing work in future, and also to confirm Ministers’ intent and commitment to using those powers. The case for TIFs—tax increment financing schemes—is unarguable. I myself have been arguing it for a number of years, first in the Treasury and then in the Department for Communities and Local Government. There are local government regulations in Scotland to allow six TIF pilots to go ahead. The use of TIFs is widespread in Canada and the US, particularly in areas where regeneration is required; indeed, only one state in the US—Arizona—does not have TIF legislation. TIFs build on the commitment that Labour made in government, in the Budget 2010, a commitment that was backed by a capital down payment of £120 million.
However, if the TIFs system is to work—that is, if local authorities are to borrow money for up-front infrastructure investment against the anticipated increase in business rate income as a result of the new infrastructure —there must above all be certainty for those long-term investments to be made. There needs to be certainty for a clear business plan and then an investment plan to be put in place; otherwise TIFs will not get off the ground and will not work. That certainty is required over a 20 to 30-year time scale, which is why it is needed in legislation. As the Centre for Cities said in response to the Government’s consultation:
“When the Government introduces Tax Increment Financing…it should be based on ‘Option 2’—a ringfenced TIF which is best suited for local investment finance within the proposed business rate retention system.”
That point was echoed by the British Property Federation, which said:
“Failing to ring-fence the income stream for that length of time”—
its submission referred to a 25 to 30-year period—
“would generally render the upfront investment unbankable, because the risks associated with it become too difficult to model, understand and price. TIF will only work with the sort of total ring-fencing proposed under Option 2”.
The Government made the commitment to ring-fencing, stating in the White Paper of October 2010:
“We will introduce new borrowing powers to enable authorities to carry out Tax Increment Financing”.
In response to the consultation, the Government also made a commitment to
“allow a limited number of Tax Increment Financing Projects to be exempted from any levy and reset for 25 years.”
That is the crucial commitment that I want to test against the content of the Bill before us. I expressed my concern about the freedom of the ring-fencing from any effects of reset to the Secretary of State on Second Reading on 10 January. He had no answer: either he did not know, or he did not want to say.
Let me therefore point the Minister to the source of my concern, which relates to paragraph 37(1)(d) of schedule 1 on page 32. This deals with the regulation-making powers of the Secretary of State, referring to regulations that can
“provide for that amount or that proportion to be disregarded for the purposes of calculations under any of the following provisions”—
in other words, regulation-making powers that can lead to the disregard of a proportion of business rates in specified areas, namely TIF areas, for particular payments that would otherwise be due. The provision goes on to identify payments to the central share, payments by billing to precepting local authorities, levy payments, safety net payments, payments on account and payments that follow from changes either to the local government finance report or to an amending report of a local government financing report. There is no power, however, to make regulations to exempt payments as a result of changes through a reset.
If I am mistaken, I would like the Minister to indicate where that power lies. If no such provision exists in the legislation, will he confirm that the Government will honour the commitment they made in their response to the consultation and will amend the Bill so that any payments resulting from a reset can be disregarded—and disregarded in full—for the purpose of the TIF areas? The Minister would be welcome to accept my new clause if he needs to do so.
Mark Field
I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says and he is absolutely right about commercial certainty, which is of great importance to any would-be investor. Instead of the notion of absolute certainty embodied in new clause 1, would the right hon. Gentleman not be satisfied, particularly in view of the important effect of building a new town or a huge new industrial estate for which the notion of a reset would apply, by reassurances from the Minister that the Government do not intend to make the changes he has in mind? Would that not be better than going down the route of absolutely certainty, which provides little flexibility either to central or local government, for an incredibly long period of 25 or 30 years? We need go back only two and a half or three decades to recognise the great changes that have taken place in many of the industrial areas that we represent and to understand that absolute certainty of the sort that he—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. [Interruption.] Order—the hon. Gentleman must not test my patience even more. Interventions are welcome, and I am prepared to give a little leeway, but the hon. Gentleman is almost making a speech.
John Healey
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I got the gist. I welcome this Bill and I want it to work. My fear is that without the certainty around potential resets—we do not know when or how often they might happen; we do not know whether they will happen every 10 years; we do not know how they will work in future—there will be huge risk and uncertainty in the system. It is not a question of whether I am satisfied by the provision; it is a question of whether the potential investors, who will determine whether the TIFs work or not, are satisfied. I am trying to convey the sentiment that I have picked up from my discussions with banks, commercial organisations, the British Property Federation and some of the City’s policy experts, who all say, “Look, we require a ring fence; it must be total”. Thus leaving out the reset, which the Government promised they would not do, does not make sense if we want the provisions to work. I hope the Minister will be able to provide the confirmation we need and be able to build it into the Bill. This issue will certainly need to be confirmed at later stages of the Bill.
Amendment 62 is designed to get to the heart of the relative share of the business rate take as between central and local government. The figures for projected resource spending on local government under the current spending review demonstrate a significant reduction for next year and the year after that—of nearly half a billion between this year and the next, and of more than £1.5 billion between next year and the year after that in nominal terms. Alongside that, the projected yield from business rates is set to go up by nearly £1 billion next year and by more than half a billion the year after that. That means that the gap between the projected business rates yield and central Government’s commitment to resource spending on local government is more than £2 billion for next year, and £4 billion for the year after that. There is a significant and growing gap between the business rates yield and spending on local government.