Clause 50 - Administration of BID levy etc
Local Government Bill
9:45 am
Mr Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)
I rise to clarify the Liberal Democrat position, which is being misrepresented by some Conservative spokesmen. When we look back at the last sitting, in which we debated BIDs, it will be difficult to clarify the Conservative position.
The concern that Conservative Members are voicing is valid because we need to know what would happen if a BID did not have the money to pay its bills. That is a clear question, and the Committee needs to know the answer. My point in my intervention on the hon. Member for Isle of Wight was that it would take a high degree of mismanagement by the businesses that led a BID for it to fail, because the way in which the BID framework is set up should make everything relatively predictable.
The hon. Gentleman referred to a pop concert on the Isle of Wight—a story with which he has previously entertained the Committee. I do not know whether a pop concert could be funded by a BID. I imagine that the BID proposal would have to set out that a pop concert was one of the projects that the BID revenue was going to fund. If that were the case, I can imagine many businesses not voting for it, because they would not want to pay for it. If, however, they all thought that it was the way to transform their town centre, maybe they would vote for it.