London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman said. He may think that all of this is for the benefit of council tax payers and local residents, but I do not agree. Businesses pay lots of money through rates and so on, and they expect a service in return. The Bill wants businesses to cough up for the council to provide services. At the end of the day, the council can say, ““By the way, even though you have coughed up for services, we don't want to provide you with any services. We'll get you to pay extra on top for anything that you might ever want to use.”” That is an unfair system. If the hon. Gentleman is advocating that we scrap the rates that businesses pay and hold them responsible for anything that goes on, I might have a bit of sympathy, but he is trying to have the best of both worlds. It seems as if we are doing this for the benefit of council officials who do not want to spend time trying to identify the individual responsible because they file that under ““Too difficult””. They want to make businesses generally be responsible for anything that goes on anywhere near their premises—in that way, they can crack the problem and do not have to do anything.