Mrs Valerie Davey: That is an important point. Many hon. Members rent offices in their constituencies on which they pay non-domestic rates, so they will probably benefit from the relief. If that is the case, hon. Members should declare an interest at the beginning of their speeches.
Mrs Valerie Davey: If a second Security Council resolution does authorise action against Iraq, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that part IV of the Geneva convention will be upheld, so that cluster bombs, depleted uranium and tactical nuclear weapons would not be deployed by any of the forces acting for the United Nations?
Mrs Valerie Davey: I beg to move amendment No. 94, in clause 43, page 19, line 22, after 'projects', insert 'and services'.
Mrs Valerie Davey: It is a great pleasure to debate business improvement districts at long last. This will probably be a lengthy debate, especially on the first set of amendments because they deal with what many people believe to be the key issue—whether property owners can be included within a business improvement district on a compulsory rather than voluntary basis. The Minister looks worried, but nobody...
Mrs Valerie Davey: The hon. Gentleman says ''or fall.'' That would mean a failed business improvement district. I make my points as someone who supports the overall thrust of Government policy on the issue. I support business improvement districts; there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that they will be successful in improving areas in our town centres and cities. I am trying to help Government policy...
Mrs Valerie Davey: The Minister has listed those authorities as examples, but they are not ones with which I am terribly familiar. How accountable are those authorities to the people in their area? Are they directly, or indirectly, elected? How will the people on whom, I presume, the levy may fall, hold the authorities to account?
Mrs Valerie Davey: I apologise for being absent at the start of the debate. The Committee has made better progress than I expected.
Mrs Valerie Davey: That is unfair of the Minister, as the record will show. How are Government discussions with CIPFA on the proposed regulations progressing? CIPFA is concerned about how depreciation costs will be accounted for, and the organisation's briefing papers make some good points. It is concerned that local authorities should properly comply with generally accepted UK accounting practices and that...
Mrs Valerie Davey: I take it therefore that the Minister will not tell us exactly what conclusions the Government are likely to draw. Mr. Raynsford indicated dissent.
Mrs Valerie Davey: In that case, I ask the Minister to look carefully at CIPFA's representations, as I am sure he will. I strongly support resource accounting, which will have a major impact in improving how public expenditure is managed and analysed, so we can get rid of the system that bedevilled us in the last century, which means that the capital infrastructure of the country, at local and national level,...
Mrs Valerie Davey: I, too, hope that the Government will enlighten us about the bodies that they have in mind, why they felt that they needed the power in subsection (3) and whether any of the bodies that might come under subsection (1)(o) might not be accountable to local or, indeed, regional citizens. I am concerned because there are some quangos in the list of bodies—for example, the Greater London...
Mrs Valerie Davey: Could the Minister, in return, explain why he thinks 75 per cent. and 50 per cent. make any sense, other than that they come from the previous legislation?
Mrs Valerie Davey: For the Minister for Local Government to denigrate local democracy is a real shame.
Mrs Valerie Davey: The Minister is skating on very thin ice. There is a distinction between this place or Whitehall deciding all housing policy for the whole of the country, and elected representatives having debates in their own area and being held to account by the people who elected them. The latter is the position of my party, but the Government's position is to centralise everything and denigrate and...
Mrs Valerie Davey: Yes.
Mrs Valerie Davey: There are so many accusations of pre-emptive rebuttal. I am not sure whether I want to go down the pre-emptive route, as the Government seem to. On the incentive point, as the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge and I start to analyse the mechanism the Government are promoting, it begins to fall apart, so it is not surprising that there has been great opposition to it outside the...
Mrs Valerie Davey: I will give way in a moment. The Capital Receipts Group has a number of debt-free councils opposed to the measures. In the Government's analysis of respondents to the draft Local Government Bill, 134 respondents wrote to the Government to say that it constituted a bad set of proposals. There is widespread opposition to them from people who have analysed them. They fear that it will not be a...
Mrs Valerie Davey: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a full answer on that point—perhaps the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge will do so—but it strikes me as a way of trying to evade responsibility. The Labour group on the LGA is very powerful and it could have changed the LGA's line if it had chosen to do so. Instead, it has allowed the LGA to be in outright opposition to this clause, and I think...
Mrs Valerie Davey: I have to correct the hon. Gentleman on one point. I do not believe that there is a Labour majority on the LGA, although Labour clearly has more votes than any other party at the moment. I give way to the Minister, who may correct us with some exact information.
Mrs Valerie Davey: We are in danger of getting away from the point, and arguing over who voted for what and when. I understand that the Labour group in the LGA was not in outright opposition to this clause and that there was disagreement within the group. I want to deal with these amendments—in particular, with amendment No. 62. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge quoted from a brief from the Capital...