COMMON PARTS OF SHOPPING MALLS NOT TO BE ENTERED SEPARATELY IN VALUATION ROLL (Hansard, 20 June 1984)

§ Mr. Ancram
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords Amendment No. 5, the amendment thereto and Lords Amendments Nos. 12 and 13.

§ Mr. Ancram
The first amendment is really required for the removal of doubt. There is every possibility that, given time, its effect would be achieved through litigation, but the Government considered it preferable to put the position of shopping malls beyond doubt.
It had been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Hirst) that there may be a growing double rating problem, whereby the common parts of shopping malls are both separately valued and taken into account in the valuation of the shops to which they give access. I congratulate my hon. Friend on pointing that out during the course of the Bill.
The amendment seeks to remove that possible problem by preventing separate entries from being made in the roll for such common parts. That would accord with the practice south of the border. The second amendment makes this effective from 1 April 1985.
Amendment No. 5 is a simple amendment introduced for the avoidance of doubt to prevent cross-border 447 anomalies from arising. The Government have introduced a similar amendment to the Rates Bill to provide necessary clarification of the law in England and Wales. This makes similar provision to existing case law in Scotland. As there may be a few cases where different treatment could arise, it seems prudent to ensure parity of treatment by making parallel provision for the avoidance of doubt.
The associated amendment to clause 19 makes this substantive provision effective from 1 April 1985. Unfortunately, the amendment as originally presented was drafted to refer to the ascertainment of gross annual value, whereas moorings that are in valuation will be valued to net annual by virtue of the 1956 Act and reference should correctly to be to that. For that reason, we have introduced the further amendment to substitute the word net for gross. I commend the amendments to the House.