Business Rate Supplements Bill
10:30 am
Peter Atkinson (Hexham, Conservative)
Before we begin, I shall draw the Committee’s attention to the normal procedure. First, would you make sure that your mobile phones are switched to silent? I shall check mine in a minute. There is a money resolution in connection with the Bill—copies are available in the room. Also, the formal warning about starred amendments: in general, my fellow Chairmen and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any that may be reached during an afternoon sitting.
For those unfamiliar with the slightly new system, I shall outline what will happen today. The Committee will be asked to consider the programme motion, on which debate is limited to half an hour. We then proceed to the motions to report written evidence and to permit the Committee to deliberate in private—I hope that we can deal with them formally—in advance of the oral evidence sessions. Assuming that the motion is agreed, the Committee will move into private session. Once the Committee has deliberated, witnesses and members of the public will be invited back into the room and our oral evidence session will commence. The arrangements are similar to those in a Select Committee—look at the brief provided and we shall work out who wants to ask any questions.
If the programme motion is agreed, the Committee will hear oral evidence this morning, this afternoon and on Thursday morning. On Thursday, the Committee will meet in the Boothroyd room, moving to the more familiar scene of the Committee corridor next week and reverting to the normal clause-by-clause scrutiny of the Bill. Is that reasonably clear to everyone? We shall see if we can find our way through that.