Clause 22
Business Rate Supplements Bill
9:45 am
Sadiq Khan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Community Cohension and Fire and Rescue Service), Department for Communities and Local Government; Tooting, Labour)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his well-articulated concerns. I agree that we need to keep costs to a minimum. We do not want wastage, and we need to ensure that there is a disincentive in respect of it. One reason for trying to synchronise the collection, with the BRS collected as part of the annual billing round, is to minimise cost duplication. On his point about reassurance, in the consultation for the secondary legislation we will set out the details of the administrative costs incurred in collection or recovery. That consultation is important. He may be reassured because he will be able to respond to the consultation and see the other responses. He is right that we cannot have a situation in which the upper-tier authority’s general revenue account is incurring an additional cost because of the failure to synchronise the collections. I hope that he will become involved in the consultation and that we can assure him that there is no additional wastage.