Clause 53 - Power of veto
Local Government Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)
I, too, am hopeful that we can make some swift progress, given the amount of business that we have. Sadly, most of the amendments are different in different ways, so I hope that the Committee will bear with me while I explain why I doubt that we can accept them. We have considered several amendments that would make property owners liable to pay the BID levy, and therefore entitled to vote on a BID proposal. We resisted them. There is no practical way in which property owners can be liable for the BID levy. They can, if they wish, make voluntary contributions.
The amendments assume that property owners will pay the levy and therefore we will have a vote on the establishment of the BID. Despite property owners having a vote, the amendments propose that the billing authority should be under a statutory duty to veto a BID proposal if the interests of property owners would be compromised in some rather unspecific way. The only reason for the amendments is that those who want property owners to be liable for the BID levy may also want the entire BIDs to be vetoed, if it were felt that the interests of property owners would not be well served by the BID.
I see no justification for the suggested approach. Clause 53 provides that a local authority can veto a BID proposal, but it does not include, as the amendment would have it, a statutory bias in favour of a particular interest group such as property owners,
and nor should it. The local authority should consider the interests of all those who would be affected by a BID. We are well aware of the interests of property owners and their importance in making a BID proposal work, but they will not be subject to the BID levy.
We expect the local authority veto to be applied rarely to protect the interests of other people in the local area who could be adversely affected by changes made as a result of the creation of a BID. The regulations will be set out in accordance with the policy in the White Paper, which states:
''Councils would have the reserve powers to veto proposals, where they could demonstrate that the proposed BID would conflict with locally adopted plans made under statute, or otherwise formally adopted by the council, such as the community strategy.''
If the council feels that there are conflicting issues, it will have an opportunity for a veto.