My Lords, I thank noble Lords for drawing attention to the inadequacies of the situation that we are in. Until February this year, I was leader of Leeds City Council and we had the difficult job of working with businesses, when the complexity of the welcome resource that was available was challenging, to decide who was worthy of getting the relief and who was not. The comments made today just highlight the difficulties that local authorities are still having to face. I speak now as a vice-president of the LGA and am mindful of its input to this debate.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for focusing on one specific sector and area, because that helps us to understand just what particular sectors are going through. We know that language schools are not the only area having problems but the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred to the loss of expertise, knowledge and experience. All those things add up to what we hope will be viable businesses as we emerge from this. In line with the comments they made, and continued by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, we are faced with a situation across business and local authorities where there is now a lack of confidence, and concern at the lack of consistency and certainty. I hope that the Minister will be able to put our minds at rest on this.
We have had a good discussion regarding our concerns about how the figure of £1.5 billion was achieved. My concern here is that while we talk in terms of billions, we actually need to drill it down to the cost for businesses. I think what we are looking for collectively in the answers is a recognition of the urgency and the detail, and to hear when and how this is to be brought forward.