Ways and Means

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and makes the point that I was trying to raise. The Federation of Small Businesses asks what we will do about commercial occupiers who are genuinely trying to do something about the utilisation of their properties. Should they be treated in exactly the same way as companies that wilfully keep their properties unoccupied, or do so due to incompetence? As far as I can tell, that distinction will not be captured. It is possible that the distinction cannot be made because it can be difficult to legislate for such things. However, we should realise that there is a distinction in the real world. Several issues are being raised by representatives of the property industry. We understand that some of them are self-interested, but it is worth quoting the British Retail Consortium, which has considered the matter primarily not from the perspective of property developers, but in the context of its interest in the retail sector. It comments unequivocally:"““The BRC believes that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanics of the property market and this reform will, as a result, fail to achieve its objective of bringing empty property into use.””" Leaving aside the particular problems of retailers, I have received several representations from people who are interested in industrial development in parts of the country that have a regeneration problem. For example, an email that I received from a group in Wales said:"““Here in South Wales we have a number of redundant large industrial buildings. They are a legacy from when previous administrations enticed overseas manufacturers to set up here with offers of cheap land, cheap labour and big grants…By introducing a new rates liability for empty industrial buildings in particular, we fear that…property entrepreneurs will not be prepared to take the risk and these buildings will crumble and die.””" Unless the measures are properly thought through, they will have an impact on entrepreneurial risk taking and development in parts of the country that are badly in need of regeneration. Let us consider the situation in Yorkshire, which is the part of the country that the Economic Secretary represents. I received a message from an organisation that referred to the fact that King Sturge’s ““UK industrial and distribution floorspace today”” report—that is a bit of a mouthful—says that almost 50 per cent. of all industrial development is speculative. It said that the measure was bound to have an impact on business behaviour and cited rather marginal Yorkshire towns—Halifax, Keighley, Hull, Goole, Barnsley and Grimsby—that are trying to attract speculative industrial development, yet will struggle to attract the amount of industrial investment that they get now after the introduction of the measure. The people in the trade who are making these assertions might well have an interest in opposing the Government’s proposal, but it would be useful and appropriate for us to have an understanding of whether the Government have made an assessment of those possible effects. Finally, I have a series of questions about how the measure would be implemented. One of them relates to a point that I have already made, and to the issue that the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) raised in her intervention: what will happen to those companies that are genuinely trying hard to market their property and to utilise it, but that are none the less caught by the new provisions? That was the issue raised by the Federation of Small Businesses. My second question relates to local discretion. The Economic Secretary mentioned that there is a bigger issue to do with whether commercial rates should be localised. As it happens, my colleagues and I want to push that idea as far as it can go, but the current controversy raises the question of how much local discretion should be allowed under the provisions that the Government are proposing. For example, would people in a depressed part of south Wales be allowed to implement the measure over a different time frame and in a different way from people in a more prosperous part of the country? Will local discretion be allowed, and if so, how will it be applied? There are many quite major issues to consider. At the end of the day, the provision may well be sensible—it certainly has endorsement from some authoritative sources—but it clearly needs a lot more thought and a great deal more consultation.