Schedule 19 - Capital allowances: conversion of parts of business premises into flats
Finance Bill
6:00 pm
Mr Michael Jack (Fylde, Conservative)
In the Budget press releases the measures in the schedule are triumphantly described as
``100 per cent. capital allowances to cover the costs of providing flats over commercial premises for letting to help bring life back in to Britain's high-streets.''
Those are three lines of total clarity, yet what we have in the schedule is pages of nit-picking detail. Will the Paymaster General explain a bit about the thinking that that went into that?
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South made an important point about the number of storeys in buildings. In some older buildings, it is not always easy to identify what constitutes the ground floor. Many older buildings contain a floor, part of which is below ground and part above it, so how shall we determine what the ground floor is? Will a code of guidance be issued, so that those who embark on the labyrinthine reading of the schedule to discover whether they are properly qualified will know in greater detail what the provision is all about?
My eye was then taken by new section 393D, which gives insight into the detail. It states:
``the flat must not have more than 4 rooms''.
That is intriguing because the schedule provides no definition of a room. The census, which the Economic Secretary was responsible for getting to at least some of us on time, contains a definition of what constitutes a room. Moreover, what does not count as a room. Does the Bill work on the census definition or another one? That is the sort of detail that should—or, perhaps more critically, should not—be defined.
We all want this laudable attempt to bring life back to the high streets of Britain to succeed. What an indictment that life has been snuffed out in the high streets of so many Labour-controlled authorities, but I shall not detain the Committee with a long discourse on my experiences in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Why, in all seriousness, must a flat be restricted to no more than four rooms? New section 393D(f) further stipulates:
``the flat must not be a high value flat''.
At least we have some definition in that respect, but if someone is trying to regenerate the inner cities of our country, what is the value of specifying the number of rooms and the worth of the flat? It is unnecessary.