We are always being told that debates in Parliament should be about real people, not statistics, and in that spirit, for me, this debate is about cabbages and flooding, not business rates per se.
This matter first came to my attention when the Black Sluice drainage board came to me deeply concerned about the prospect of losing £23,000 as a result of the levy. Worrying though that was, it turned out that a business in my constituency—it is incredibly rural, and in many areas business rates payments are very little, which is why I have some concerns about business rates retention, although we will gloss over that—was, although set to see its drainage levy fall by £23,000, faced with a business rates rise of well into six figures. So my drainage board—one of several in my constituency—was in a state of some confusion over the prospect of not having enough money to keep people’s feet dry, and my local businesses were in a state of perturbation at the prospect of going bankrupt.
This anomaly was a real issue for my constituents, as it was for those of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). When I went to see Fountains, the business in my constituency, I was delighted to discover not just its confidence in expanding its business, this potential problem aside, but how much it led not just Lincolnshire—a pretty difficult place to lead when it comes to growing brassicas—but the country in terms of its technology. In collaboration with the National Farmers Union, whose work on this I pay particular tribute to, it alerted me to the anomaly arising from the Tunnel Tech case and the ramifications of that case for it and others running glasshouses across my constituency.