Ways and Means

Whether the measure will lead to more inflation or to less utilisation of capacity elsewhere in the economy is not clear, but the hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there are knock-on effects. One that has not been referred to and that is potentially rather important is the fact that a large chunk of commercial property is owned by pension funds. Eventually, the measure will feed through into reduced returns for pension funds. There will be a hit on pension funds. Of course, they have had other hits—some of which have been much more important than this—but it would be useful to have some acknowledgement from the Government and some estimate of what the measure will ultimately cost the owners, who are institutional finance bodies. I have several questions about such a measure’s possible impact on the market. I understand the basic problem involving empty commercial property and have a couple of anecdotes to illustrate it. An appalling derelict Co-op completely blights the whole of one of my local high streets. As far as I can establish, the property has been sitting empty for many years simply because of the lethargy and incompetence of the Co-op management. If a change to the tax regime would persuade the company to do something with the property, that would be welcome. However, we all know of shops in our local shopping centres that were not viable and had to be closed by the occupiers. Those people are often desperate for planning approval to convert the property into a housing development, but local planners refuse to give that because it would change the nature of the shopping centre. Are we going to penalise those shopkeepers? How will they be accommodated following the change?