Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment No. 97, in

clause 50, page 21, line 7, at end insert—

'(1A) Regulations under (1) above may specify that all or a proportion of the start up costs of a BID can be met from the BID levy.'.

This is a probing amendment, because I want to be sure for what purposes the proceeds of the BID levy can be used.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

On a point of order, Mr. Griffiths. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman but, for clarification, can you tell us whether we are debating amendment No. 97, clause stand part and new clause 7, or will clause stand part and new clause 7 be debated separately?

Mr Win Griffiths (Bridgend, Labour)

Clause stand part and new clause 7 will be debated together after this debate.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

Subsection (1) appears to give the Secretary of State the ability to make provision through regulation for the BID levy to be applied for, for a range of different matters. I am not sure whether the BID levy will be able to be used for the start-up costs of the BID. It is important to put that on the record and have clarification. I had hoped to look at the guidance notes, which the Minister kindly sent to all Committee members, but as hon. Members will recall, at the last sitting I was exceedingly generous and passed mine to the hon. Member for Cotswold, who appears not to have returned them.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

When I arrived in Committee this morning I found that I did not have those guidance notes. I am not sure whether I dropped them on the way, in which case the cleaner will have found them on the stairs and, no doubt, they will have ended up in the dustbin. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I have been making frantic efforts to try to recover them during this sitting.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Gentleman can only imagine my relief. I wait in anticipation of the return of the said document. It is possible that this issue is clarified in the guidance, which is why I had intended to refer to that. The point is important because people who want to set up BIDs will want to understand whether they will be funding the commencement, foundation and preparatory work from their own pocket or whether that will eventually come out of the proceeds of the BID levy. If the Under-Secretary replies that the BID levy cannot be used to recompense people for start-up costs, that is a concern. That could be a barrier to setting up BIDs because, although costs may not be huge, it is possible that in some areas, especially where there are small businesses and no large businesses prepared to stump up the money to get the project off the ground, there will be no one to lead the way in providing the necessary seed corn for start-up. If the Under-Secretary says that the BID levy cannot be used for that purpose, we might wish to divide the Committee on the amendment, although I intended it primarily as a probing amendment.

To make it clear to the Committee that there will be potentially significant start-up costs, bodies that have tried to pilot BIDs before this legislation reaches the statute book, such as the Circle initiative, have released documents to explain their experience of what is involved. The Circle initiative, in its document ''One year on'', shows that in the first stages—its step one, which it called ''building the partnership''—costs can be up to £20,000.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point on the clause, which provides powers to make regulations covering the ways in which local authorities may collect the BID levy from those liable to pay it. The amendment would include in the Bill that the regulations

''may specify that all or a proportion of the start up costs of a BID can be met from the BID levy''.

The amendment is not needed because anyone putting forward a BID proposal can include in it a provision that the costs incurred in developing the BID are to be covered by the levy, assuming that the ratepayers vote in favour of the proposal and the BID is established. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's point and that he will withdraw his amendment.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

That is a very helpful reply. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr Win Griffiths (Bridgend, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 7—BID: estimated bills—

'.—After section 41 of the 1988 Act insert—

A Billing Authority must, no later than 31st October in the year preceding a revaluation, send to nondomestic ratepayers an estimated Bill for the following financial year.'.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

I shall deal first with new clause 7. Some confusion arose because the original grouping placed clause stand part and new clause 7 with amendment No. 97, but I see that today's amended grouping separates them, as you kindly clarified, Mr. Griffiths.

New clause 7 is a probing new clause. Businesses must have time and certainty to plan. Under the non-domestic rating system, an estimate is sent out by, I think, the beginning of December, when the rates have to be paid at the beginning of April. The new clause tests the Government's intention in relation to BIDs. It seems wholly reasonable that there should be some prior warning when a BID is to be brought into operation as to what businesses are likely to have to pay. After all, every business will have to pay the supplementary rate. It would be useful to know what the Government's intentions are.

I wish to return to what happens when the financial arrangements of BIDS start to go wrong. I hope that they will not. If proper business plans are drawn up and followed, there will be no reason why the arrangements should go wrong. I hope that the BIDs are successful and exceed their business plan.

However, in the real world it is likely that the finances of some will go wrong. What will be the process when that happens? Presumably, the billing authority, which is to act as guardian of the BID finances, will have some idea that the BID is overspending. In the early years, that may not be a problem, but it would be interesting to know whether the billing authority will have the power to alter the multiplier, if that is how such adjustments will be made. The guidance clearly indicates that the two options available for recovering extra rates are a

multiplier and a supplement on the non-domestic rates bill, or a separate supplementary rates bill.

In the event that the financial governance is wrong, what arrangements are in the Bill for putting it right? The Under-Secretary will probably tell us that that falls under the powers of the Secretary of State. That may be so, but the Secretary of State intervening in every BID that goes wrong seems a very centralist mechanism for dealing with something relatively simple that should be handled locally.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman did not speak much to new clause 7, perhaps because there is some confusion about why he tabled it under BID arrangements, rather than revaluation, which is a subject that we shall discuss under part 5. The new clause proposes:

''A Billing Authority must, no later than 31st October in the year preceding a revaluation, send to nondomestic ratepayers an estimated Bill for the following financial year.''

I suppose that the hon. Gentleman could make his argument on the basis of revaluation in general, but that seems a tangential issue to the subject of BID arrangements. However, if that was his intention, so be it.

It would be difficult to apply the provision on the basis of BIDs, because it would be relevant only if the BID levy was calculated on the rateable value of property, which will not always be the case. Each BID will have the freedom to decide how it will calculate the additional levy, and we have set out the different options for such calculations in the working draft of the guidance.

Sending an advance bill would be expensive and unnecessary. Clause 62 states that a list of the rateable values of properties following a revaluation will be available six months before the revaluation affects ratepayers' bills. The information will be available and in the public domain. Ratepayers who also pay a BID levy could refer to it if they wanted to calculate the amount of their BID levy after the revaluation. Issuing another bill would be an additional and unnecessary cost to a local authority involved in a BID and would not apply if BIDs chose not to base the levy on rateable value.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

The new clause probably should have come under clause 62. Nevertheless, as I said in my opening remarks, there is a power in non-domestic rating to send out estimates. As the Minister will know, calculating provisional non-domestic rates is complicated. Even expert practitioners need to do incredibly difficult calculations, particularly when transitional relief is involved. The businesses involved in the BIDs are likely often to be very small, with meagre resources. They may be struggling to survive. Does the Minister envisage an estimate being sent out ahead of the bill that businesses in BIDs will receive on their doormats?

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

We may have an opportunity to deal with this later when we discuss revaluation in more detail, but we believe that the proposers of a BID will make the impact of any additional levy on ratepayers

widely known. The information provisions with respect to BIDs are sufficient.

We have deliberately introduced a clause to permit ratepayers more time to find out, in advance of revaluation, the potential changes to their liability. The current revaluation provisions do not include that. We are increasing the three months to six months. On balance, the extra cost and administrative burden to the local authority, in sending out two sets of rate bills, one of which would be far in advance of the new financial year, would be excessive. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand and accept that point.

The hon. Gentleman asked what would happen if BIDs got into difficulties and who would cover that. I gave him an undertaking to write to him with more information, but I want to clarify that there would be protection in the form of opportunities for the Secretary of State to intervene, if necessary, to alter or terminate BID arrangements. There is also guidance, and I am happy to say that I have a spare copy to offer to any member of the Committee who wants to see it.

On the deficit question, it is envisaged in the guidance that a BID would be likely to take the form of a company limited by guarantee. Therefore deficits would be the responsibility of the BID organisation. It would field any risks or liabilities in the way that any company limited by guarantee would do.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

I was making two different points. On the previous clause I wanted to know what would happen if the account were in deficit at the end of the BID. The point that I was making just now—and I think that this is a valid point for the Minister to consider—was that if it is clear during the life of the BID that the finances are going wrong, there seems to be no power in the Bill for the billing authority to alter the multiplier to put right the deficit. That would avoid a deficit to be dealt with at the end of the five years, when the BID came to an end. If it could be dealt with during the lifetime of the bid, those problems would be overcome.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

I do not believe that billing authorities would be in a position to alter the multiplier halfway through the duration of a BID. The financial provisions—the levy on the ratepayers—would have to be clearly set out at the outset of the BID proposal. That is the question on which the ratepayers would vote. It would be wrong to make changes to it without their assent.

How the finances should proceed should be clearly calculated and set out to begin with, so that the levy would be known and the yield anticipated and so that the expenditure could be planned. I should find it difficult to conceive of circumstances in which the proposals would be likely to go astray halfway through, but I accept that it is possible. That is the reason for clause 65(4), which provides for regulations about alterations to BID arrangements.

Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)

I rather suspect that the opposite problem may occur—that of BIDs building

up a surplus because of underprediction of rate income, interest on balances and difficulty in spending. If at the end of, say, 10 years the BID's operation suddenly stopped and there was a surplus, would that be returned to the businesses or allocated to another council budget? After all, if money is being collected from those businesses for a specific purpose which is no longer considered relevant, surely it should go back to those who paid it?

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

That is precisely the sort of issue that we hope BID proposers will anticipate at the outset: if they accrued a surplus, how would the money be used to supplement their plans as part of the BID proposals or could it in some way be returned to the ratepayers? We do not envisage that it will be a significant issue, because we expect that the proposers will be able to plan the yield and their expenditure and match the two. The money will not belong to the billing authority or the council; it cannot simply be subsumed because we have the provisions for a separate BID revenue account.

In the light of that, I hope that hon. Members will not press new clause 7 and will allow the clause to stand part of the Bill.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

The logic of what the Under-Secretary has said is that, if the surplus belongs to the ratepayers who have paid it, a deficit must also be paid by the ratepayers. However, he shakes his head. He has said that he will write to the Committee on that aspect.

I still find unconvincing the fact that the Under-Secretary cannot envisage that businesses must have some certainty to plan and will not be sent some form of estimate. That perhaps shows a lack of understanding on his part about the difficulty of calculating the rates payable under the non-domestic rating system. It is incredibly complicated. I repeat that many practitioners have difficulty in making the calculations when they have to appeal against a non-domestic rating liability. Therefore, particularly in the computer age when calculations can be done fairly easily once the different factors are put into the equation, and especially if the Under-Secretary does not envisage a huge number of ratepayers in any individual BID, it should be relatively simple for those with the software to send out the estimates. I suspect that the matter will be probed elsewhere.

Having said that, I think that we have exhausted this matter for the time being, so I shall not persuade my hon. Friends to vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

I apologise to my hon. Friend if, by speaking, I slightly contradict him, but I do not believe that we have exhausted one or two issues.

As we go through the debate, my feelings are mixed as to whether I congratulate the Government on producing a proposal, however relatively ill formed, that they hope will be flexible and will apply in different circumstances that are difficult to foresee, or ask them more detailed questions which, in the nature of things, they will find it difficult to answer.

First, the money collected by a BID will be retained by the local authority, but presumably in a form of trusteeship, on behalf of those who are designated in the BID framework and have the authority to spend the money. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will correct me if I am wrong, but that body might be a chamber of commerce, a local branch, a town traders' association or something of that kind. It might be a town council. In the absence of a town council, it might be a form of local partnership. I assume that, as long as the body is set out in the BID arrangements, that will be satisfactory. I see the Minister nodding. I see the Under-Secretary nodding. Will the money be subject to district audit procedures, or would there be separate auditing requirements for the money, which, although held by the authority, is the property of another group?

The Minister is sanguine about people's budgeting arrangements. He seems to think it unlikely that the circumstances that my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold described—a BID running out of money halfway through—would arise.

I have to tell the Minister that people's capacity to get budgets wrong is a wonder to behold. My local authority, for example, budgeted to run a pop concert at a cost of £60,000 and was surprised to find that it cost £380,000, which is the equivalent of an £8 per household levy on the ratepayers of the Isle of Wight. Even with high quality professional financial advice, local government gets things wrong. We therefore need to push the Minister a little further on what happens if the BID proposals do not work. If a local authority has collected the money there will be an income stream. If it finds out halfway through that it will need much more money, it will have either to alter its income stream or to abandon the proposal because it simply does not work.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that businesses will be running the partnership arrangements? That means that many of his points do not hold. Is he saying that if there were a BID on the Isle of Wight, he would be concerned about the ability of businesses in his constituency to run it?

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

Not half as concerned as I would be about the ability of some other organisations to run such a scheme. I am sure that the businesses would have no difficulty in running the scheme, but that does not alter the fact that it is possible to make serious errors in one's budgeting arrangements. When a business takes a risk, it calculates the risk and knows what will happen. If it does not get the income that it expected, it goes bust, which is a serious threat that it takes into account in calculating its expenditure.

Can a BID go bust? I simply do not know. Who has the authority to call a pause on a BID? Will the Minister step in? Will the local authority treasurer have to report that the BID income stream is not working? Will the businesses be expected to manage the money? I hope so. The Minister has not explained those points, and it is unwise of him to brush off the possibility of an income stream faltering or being found inadequate.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton brushed aside my hon. Friend's valid point. Although an individual business can, of course, control its budgets, we are not talking about individual businesses. We are talking about different sizes and types of businesses and other partners such as the voluntary sector, the charitable sector and the local authority sector. We have not talked about what happens with different local authority departments and Government Departments that may have property within a BID area and therefore be involved. There is range of reasons why BIDs could go wrong.

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

My hon. Friend assists me greatly, because that is the exact problem. Even businesses sometimes manage to get their budgets and resources wrong.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

First, I must clarify the fact that I was trying to help the hon. Gentleman because he seemed to think that BIDs would be led and financially managed by local authorities. Although I hoped that I had helped him, I clearly had not. Secondly, the financial management of a BID will be rather easier than that of many businesses, because revenue and expenditure will be clearly set out and predictable. Demand risk, which is one of the key issues, and the potential variability in supply costs are the sort of problems that affect commercial enterprises, and, indeed, some public sector organisations. That sort of risk will not exist within a BID.

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

If the hon. Gentleman is saying that a BID is unlikely, or indeed cannot be used—[Interruption.] He says that he is not saying that—but if a BID cannot be used to provide the seed-corn for a risky enterprise such as a pop festival, which businesses may think is a jolly good idea because it will bring lots of people to the area concerned, some of my concerns fall. However, I can see nothing to prevent a BID from being used for that purpose. Such an investment is, by the nature of things, risky and can lead, as it regrettably did in my constituency last year, to a loss not of £60,000 but of £380,000. Unfortunately for the council tax payers, but fortunately in other respects, there was a pocket—the council tax payers' pocket—that could pay for that loss and make it up.

In the case of a BID, no body can provide the income stream to make up for an unpredicted loss. The Minister gets my drift, even if the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton does not. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold on the Front Bench gets my drift, too, because he said so.

Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)

A BID scheme will exist for a limited period. A scheme will be put up and people will understand what is happening. If you wanted to improve the centre of one of our cities, the expenditure would inevitably be at the beginning of the process rather than being spread evenly throughout it. You might have to spend considerably more money in the early years than you would in the later years.

Mr Win Griffiths (Bridgend, Labour)

I would not.

Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)

No, you would not, Mr. Griffiths.

The Bill makes it clear that if a local authority is putting up a scheme that will have an income stream

over 10 years, it cannot borrow against that income stream. Can those within a BID borrow against that income stream in order to undertake works and use the income to pay off the cost over several years? If not, there will be cash flow problems, because it is highly unlikely that they will be able to organise their affairs in order to spend equal money in each period of the 10-year BID. Would that just be in the nature of the scheme, because the money would be front-loaded and the income would pay it off? In other schemes, would the financial management be done on a year-by-year basis? It would be interesting if the Minister could set the situation out. If borrowing is not allowed, it will severely inhibit the benefits of the policy.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & 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.

Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West, Conservative)

They would be daft.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Gentleman, in his inimitable style, says that he doubts that that would happen, and I have to agree.

Will the Under-Secretary explain whether it is the Government's intention to deal with the matter through the powers of regulation in subsection (1)? That gives the Secretary of State power to make provisions with respect to the application of BID levy. Do the Government intend to say that there are certain risky ventures for which BID revenue could not be useful?

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman has largely grasped the way in which we envisage business improvement districts will work. Several protections will be put in place, predominantly through the assent of the ratepayers of the business improvement district. Through the simple majority and the aggregate rateable value vote, businesses have control at the outset if they see any part of the proposals that might be likely to go awry. Given that the levy and the

proposals are all set out in advance, they should be clear about what they can anticipate.

We do not want the system to be too prescriptive. We want to see how the pilots work out. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion, who sits on the steering group, will know that we shall watch carefully how they develop, and any problems or anomalies that they encounter. We shall not be rigid in considering whether the guidance will need changing in future, and so forth.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight asked questions about where the money is held and retained. During the debate on an earlier clause, we said that the conception of the BID revenue account will be subject to the normal arrangements that other billing authority accounts are subject to, such as district audit and so forth. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's questions.

I do not dismiss the possibility, which always exists, of a measure of risk. There is a risk to everything in life, but I think that the risk in this case is minimal. There is always a measure of risk related to income streams changing over time. I would not want to brush over that, and I was not intending to do so. We shall put in place measures to review the pilots. It might also be appropriate, as we are considering draft guidance for the BIDs, to consider whether we can add more detail concerning financial liability issues. That would be a reasonable point to make. In the document, we said that we envisaged a BID being a company limited by guarantee. That gives protection when things go wrong.

The hon. Member for Poole asked whether a BID would be able to borrow. I am not sure that ''you'' would be able to borrow, but if ''one'' were a BID, one would be able to borrow a certain amount. Given that they have a fairly short lifespan—about five years—it is unlikely that BIDs would enter into anything other than short-term borrowing arrangements. That would be possible if a BID were a company limited by guarantee, but the normal constraints on short-term borrowing would apply. I hope that those comments answer the points raised, and that new clause 7 will not be pressed.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

I suspect that the Under-Secretary is making policy on the hoof because he has not thought matters through. He has now come up with the wonderful idea that there will be a company limited by guarantee. When things go wrong, such a vehicle has to cease. Therefore, there must be a power to terminate the BID when financial improbity or excess takes place. There is nothing in the Bill, other than the Secretary of State's power, that can terminate BIDs. Perhaps the Minister would clarify the matter. Would it not be much better, when things go wrong—provided that the administration was still going on and the BID was still performing its original functions and purposes—for the Secretary of State to issue guidance or instructions that would allow the billing authority to alter the multiplier during the course of the BID, so that more money could be raised, especially as doing so might be justified on the ground that the bid would then succeed? I would be grateful if the Minister would answer that question.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

As I said earlier, these are fairly minimal risks. Although I do not dismiss them, we need not give them disproportionate consideration. Protections are given in the BID guidance; I shall pass a copy to the hon. Gentleman, because I suspect that he did not read that part of it. It says on page 24 that BID boards need to decide an appropriate form, and that a BID company limited by guarantee has a number of advantages, not least that it can be wound up in the normal way. The question of continuation is not a problem. Clause 56(4) gives the Secretary of State the ability to make regulations on the termination of BID arrangements.

Mr David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion, Labour/Co-operative)

I was about to defend the Minister against the accusation that he was making policy on the hoof, but it proved to be unnecessary—he defended himself admirably. I reaffirm what he said, and draw the attention of the hon. Member for Cotswold to the guidance referred to by the Minister and the information about the preference for a company limited by guarantee on page 24. The guidance has been available to Committee members since we began our deliberations; it would be a pity if the hon. Gentleman has mislaid that document as well as the one that he borrowed from the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton earlier in the week.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

My hon. Friend is entirely correct; the BID guidance document has been made available to all members of the Committee. I shall make sure that, as soon as possible, the usual channels provide him with the spare copy that I took to replace the copy that I gave the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton to replace the copy that he gave the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman's collection of BID guidance documents seems to grow by the day.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

Just to ensure that it is on record, I hope that the Minister will say that the Government have no intention of being over-prescriptive on the form that BIDs can take. A company limited by guarantee is a good idea, but one can imagine other methods of incorporation—or even non-incorporation such as ordinary partnerships. We need experimentation in order to see what works best. A company limited by guarantee might work best in some areas and town centres; a partnership might be better in others.

I urge the Minister not to give the local authority the power to vary the rate multiplier as suggested by the hon. Member for Cotswold. I found it surprising that the hon. Gentleman should want to give local authorities the power to increase taxes on business, but it would be a bad move because it would deter people from signing up to BIDs. They need to be certain how much it will cost them.

Mr Win Griffiths (Bridgend, Labour)

Order. I urge hon. Members to be brief in their interventions. I have been rather generous this morning, but I would be pleased if the Committee would tighten up in that respect.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)

Those are wise words, Mr. Griffiths, although I appreciate the comments of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, who is now an

enthusiastic convert to the wonders of BIDs. We welcome him on board.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that it would not be wise to allow that supplementary alteration to the levy. I am glad to put on the record that I agree that we would not want to be prescriptive and always have a company limited by guarantee. There are other forms of partnership that offer a level of protection. We want BIDs to make their own judgments about that locally. The businesses that vote and the people who pay will make their own judgments about security and about the potential for the BID to succeed and will exercise that judgment when they vote.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 50 ordered to stand part of the Bill.