My Lords, I wish to ask the Minister a couple of questions in support of my noble friend. On the shale oil and gas regulations, I think the Minister said that 40% will still go to district councils. I presume that that is 80% of the existing 50% that councils will retain. If it is not, it would be helpful if he could expand on that. Perhaps he can also say a little more about the reasons for allocating the additional 50% of business rate relief, where there are two-tier authorities, to county councils rather than to district councils. Is it simply because the former is the minerals authority, bearing in mind that it is the district councils that will suffer quite a lot of the disruption that is inevitably entailed in some of these activities?
Can the Minister also say a little more about how the extent of a class A and class B hereditament is to be determined? What sort of factors will be taken into account, bearing in mind that a lot of what goes on in fracking happens many feet below the surface? How is that, as a practical matter, going to be dealt with? Finally, can the Minister help us a little on what the retention of the 50% actually means? If, for example, an authority might otherwise be in receipt of a safety net payment, would that additional 50% be ignored completely and would the safety net payment still be made? Similarly, does it have any effect on what would have been the levy payment in those circumstances?
As for the baseline funding levels being uprated by 2%, presumably the effect of that is to reduce what the safety net would otherwise have been. Can the Minister give us a few statistics on recent experience with safety nets? We have presumably had only one period for which they have been paid, because they are paid nine months after the end of the year—so I think that there can be only one series of payments. It would be helpful to know what they are. Could we also know about the extent to which payments on account of safety nets were made for the first year, which presumably will have been made for 2014-15?
Can the Minister say a little more, too, on the status of outstanding appeals for business rates, and how those appeals might be analysed between relevant revaluation periods?