Business Rate Supplements Bill
12:00 pm
John Healey: Post-Lyons report and in the detailed discussions leading up to and after the White Paper, there was very little appetite in any quarter for a power to downward-flex the business rate at a local level. The reasons for this were threefold. First, there was a concern about its potential impact on local services, because business rates are a source of revenue to support local services. Secondly, there was an associated concern to protect the council tax payer in such circumstances, mirroring the way that this Committee is concerned about the interest of business rate payers with the prospect of a BRS. Thirdly, there was concern about the additional complexity in the tax system—something on which you and your colleagues, quite rightly, have been effective in pressing Ministers over the past decade. For a combination of reasons, principally adding up to a lack of appetite from any quarter for that downward shift, which may have been part of the original discussion on the BRS, we have not included that in the Bill.