Clause 24
10:30 am
John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification of his intent, but it is not entirely captured in his amendment, which is what I am addressing. The power and principle that any surplus funds could be directed towards refunds are clearly established in the Bill. By taking away the Secretary of State’s power to act in a way appropriate to particular circumstances that are impossible to anticipate in detail from our vantage point, the amendment could have the unintended consequence of reducing some of the protection that the hon. Gentleman would like for the interests of businesses that he wants to promote. It might create further difficulties and make those consequences wider ranging if the refund was automatic in the event of any BRS cancellation.
The clause also provides the Secretary of State with a power to take a number of steps before a full-blown cancellation of a BRS—including refunds of surpluses or refunds without a cancellation—so that the potential for a refund does not depend on the cancellation of a BRS. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich was understandably concerned about that, as it has the potential be an almost nuclear power. He was concerned that it might be used not in a measured way, but to remove a BRS at some point in the future.
I accept the point that the phrase in the clause, “materially inconsistent” with the prospectus, is not defined, but it means that a levying authority has made more than a minor deviation from the terms of its prospectus. If, when the project was undertaken, the levying authority did something extra that had a relatively small effect on the cost, but no effect on the level of the BRS, it is very unlikely that that would be considered materially inconsistent and that it would be sufficiently strong grounds for the Secretary of State to consider a full-blown cancellation of the BRS. However, if a levying authority diverted revenue from the BRS from one project to another, clearly that might be materially inconsistent. From the Committee’s point of view, at this stage, any sort of judgment on intervention, including cancellation, would be based on a test of fact and a test of degree.