Rating (Empty Properties) Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) on tabling an amendment that prompted such a comprehensive and thorough debate. The Committee owes him its gratitude. I have been enlightened by what I have learned this afternoon, such as what was said about the castles and ruins in Shropshire—ruins that do not pay rates anyway, but we have heard about them. Genuine congratulations are due to the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne). What he has achieved with the restoration of a castle is welcome and will be noted. We also learned in the debate, which is on a tightly drawn amendment and not on Second Reading or Report, about the collection of classic cars in East Yorkshire. I was hoping that the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) would tell us what they were, but I suspect, Sir Alan, that you would have stopped him, just as you are about to stop me now, so I will move quickly to the amendment. The problem with the amendment is not the justification or otherwise for the exemptions that it proposes, but a misunderstanding of what the amendment would do if it were written into the Bill. Let me explain why that is the case. I think that that will satisfy right hon. and hon. Members who have raised in depth concerns that were expressed on Second Reading. It is important that we respond to those concerns. When I read the amendment, it looked very familiar. As I looked into it, I realised that the amendment, subject to minor tweaking, is taken from the wording of the Non-Domestic Rating (Unoccupied Property) Regulations 1989, as amended. The regulations flowed from the Local Government Finance Act 1988, and it is the 1988 Act that the Bill seeks to amend. Putting the 1998 Act regulations into the Bill would insert into it exemptions that are already in place in such a way that we would not be able to change them, should we want to, without primary legislation. In other words, the exemptions are already there. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) made an intelligent and quick-witted point. I increasingly realise why he served in government for such a long time. In fact, I think that he was the longest-serving Local Government Minister, so I take what he says very seriously. Over the summer, we will consult on the regulations to take on board the points that interested parties, including hon. Members, may make. Putting the existing regulations into the Bill would not achieve what right hon. and hon. Members want to achieve. Hon. Members have referred to several problems. I could use the Aunt Agatha analogy, which is a good one. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) mentioned planning issues, which were also raised on Second Reading. Those and other problems already exist under the current time scale and rate of collection, and they would continue to exist whatever the algebraic formula in clause 1. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) is not here to hear that, but those points are not relevant to the Bill, although the amendment has given us the opportunity to explain the position. It might be of interest to Opposition Members, and indeed to my hon. Friends, to learn that the authors of the 1988 Act and the 1989 regulations were the late Sir Nicholas Ridley and his then Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). I will contact the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished member of the Chairmen’s Panel, to explain how his right hon. and hon. Friends have been trying to undermine his beautifully crafted laws and regulations. Indeed, I am doing no more than repeating the process that was undertaken by Sir Nick, whom I remember lobbying as a student. I always found that he gave us a very fair hearing although he was ideologically opposed to us. I do not know what he would have made of the smoking ban—I imagine that he would have been outraged. Section 45 of the 1988 Act sets out the liability of unoccupied hereditaments for business rates, and subsection (1) determines to which of those the liability applies. The liability includes, among other things, all hereditaments that fall within a description prescribed by the Secretary of State by regulations. In other words, the 1988 Act gave the Secretary of State the power—subject of course to the passing of the necessary regulations—to determine the exact classes of unoccupied hereditament that should be subject to empty property rates. By means of some rather convoluted double negatives, the effect of the regulations is to include within the empty property rates regime all unoccupied hereditaments except those falling within certain specified classes of exemption.