Business Rate Supplements Bill
12:00 pm
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster, Conservative)
We know how the politics are. I was delighted to hear you say such positive things about the work of the aggressively Tory-run Wandsworth council and the local businesses. I am sure that the people in Tooting will be delighted to hear your endorsement.
On a serious level, with Crossrail we are talking about relatively small chunks of money—a fifth of the overall funding package. We have gone through the long rigmarole of getting the hybrid Bill through Parliament and the Standing Committee. Crossrail is now one of those big infrastructure projects that we should obviously move on with fairly quickly if we are going to pump-prime in a Keynesian way, particularly given the difficulties in the London and south-east economy. There are already parcels of money—over 80 per cent. of the total budget—so are you saying that we could not go ahead and find a way of squirreling out a further 18 or 19 per cent. without the Bill?