Non-Domestic Rating (Nursery Grounds) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-07-10
Topic: Public Lands
Matthew Robert Warman (Conservative, Centre-right): It is extraordinary that this House has spent so long talking about doing such a simple thing as undoing the errant court judgment, and I suspect we may even continue talking about it for a few minutes yet. However, that is only fitting, because, as has been said by a number of my hon. Friends, including the Minister, and by the Opposition, we are all here concerned about this issue as we understand the profound impact that a single court judgment could have had, not only on businesses up and down the country, but on the food chain and even on the communities and local economies that those businesses support I have talked in the previous debate on this matter about the individual constituency business that came to me to discuss the impact this court judgment would have had, not only on its business and bottom line, but, crucially, on the income to the local internal drainage board. This would have meant that in my constituency, which is the most at risk of flooding in the country, according to the Association of British Insurers, not only would businesses and livelihoods have been affected, as others have said, but, even worse, that huge swathes of the area would have been at greater risk of flooding. That would have posed a real threat to the broader economy, the food chain and huge numbers of people who live in areas at or sometimes below sea level and who rely on those internal drainage boards being able to function The Bill is therefore a hugely important tweak to the legislation that was inadvertently altered by the court judgment, and it is a fitting tribute to the change that the previous Minister and this Minister are initiating and seeing through respectively that we have devoted a reasonable amount of parliamentary time to it. However, it is worth pointing out that we would hope in future, in legislation generally, not just in this area, to avoid a single court judgment having the kind of ramifications that this one has had here. We would all like not to put our constituents through the genuine trauma of knowing that the business they work for might face real financial difficulties simply because of a single court judgment. Somewhat unusually, these people in my area may also face the risk of their homes and businesses being flooded, which is an additional factor Although it is good that the Government are fixing this and the Opposition parties have co-operated so readily in fixing it, we should also bear in mind that it would have been better not to have found ourselves in this situation in the first place. So my plea to the Minister is to see what he can do, working across the Government—I do not pretend that all the problems are in his Department, by any means—to avoid legislation where we have not thought through all the potential consequences of the precise wording. We spend a lot of time in Bill Committees and in Committee of the whole House going through pieces of legislation line by line, paying close and deep attention to every moment in those Committees, but sometimes such things lay themselves open to unintended consequences, so we would all welcome anything that can be done to try to avoid them Clearly, the Government have acted as quickly as they can, given the unfortunate situation with the previous Bill, to bring this piece of legislation back individually, notwithstanding the election interrupting the previous passage of the Local Government Finance Bill. Obviously, that Bill was going to do a number of things far wider than this one and it is clearly the right thing to have adjusted how the legislation has been formatted so that we can do this quickly. It is likely we would have ended up seeing businesses paying large sums and going through significant difficulty only then to be given that money back. Of course it is a good thing that this legislation has been moved on faster than it otherwise might, but I hope that we would all like to avoid this sort of situation in the first place I will close simply by saying that I hope the Minister will do all he can to avoid this sort of situation arising again, should he have the opportunity. I re-emphasise how good it is that we have been able to bring this matter to a relatively speedy conclusion and how heartening it is to see so many colleagues discussing a matter that otherwise would have passed with relatively little attention. This is a good example of the Government giving real attention to an important matter and acting quickly to correct a court judgment that was never intended by any previous Government. I welcome the actions that the Minister has taken and, as I said previously, that his predecessor has taken. Perhaps weirdly, I welcome, above all, the co-operation of the Opposition in getting on with this ever so quickly. I hope that the constituents who raised this issue with me see that this is an example of action being taken and are genuinely reassured.