Rates (Amendment) Bill: Second Stage

Part of Executive Committee Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 11:45 am on 19 January 2016.

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Photo of Claire Hanna Claire Hanna Social Democratic and Labour Party 11:45, 19 January 2016

I thank the Minister for his introduction. We have a long day in front of us, so I will not labour the points. There are about 20 Bills, I think, going through at various stages, and if we did not give this one accelerated passage, it would not make it through. It is a good Bill. They are good provisions, and we support them, but I do not think we should overuse the accelerated passage tool. Some of the blame for its current use has to be placed with the dysfunction that has characterised the Assembly for much of the mandate.

We welcome the provisions. There are wider issues about our rating scheme. It is the one tool that we have, and we use it a lot. We are in danger of rating schemes becoming illegitimate. When there are so many exemptions, other people are picking up the slack and it loses some legitimacy. I have submitted a detailed response to the live consultation on that, which primarily reflects the views of traders in my constituency.

Window displays are useful, and they can take the bad look off dereliction. Anything that allows people to use those spaces creatively to mitigate the effects of empty premises is welcome. In my previous job, we used empty shop fronts for exhibitions and so on, and that can be done, whether it is other businesses, voluntary groups or anything that can enhance the area. However, we do not want to overplay the Potemkin village aspect of things; we need entrepreneurship and real vibrancy back on our high streets. Just covering up dereliction is not something that we want to do, but it is useful.

We also fully support the community and amateur sports club provision. This is the departmental version; we supported the private Member's version too. We want the consultation to proceed, and we hope that the subordinate legislation on that will come forward sooner rather than later.