Consideration and Third Reading (Hansard, 9 May 2001)

§ Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire)
Few Bills, other than those covering genuine emergencies, can have had so little time devoted to them in Committee or on the Floor of the House as has been devoted to this measure. I remind the House that the Prime Minister promised this Bill on 30 March 2000). It did not have a Second Reading until a week ago, so we have already suffered a long delay because of the Government's incompetence in turning the Prime Minister's promise into a Bill.
As the Minister said, the Committee yesterday had only two and a half hours—

Mr. Ainsworth
We had all day but did not need it.

§ Mr. Paice
The Minister says from a sedentary position that the Committee had all day but did not need it, but, if he were to be frank, he would acknowledge that some matters received extremely cursory attention because of the pressure to make progress, as [...] shall describe in a moment.

§ Mr. Jim Dowd (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury)
The hon. Gentleman was not there.

§ Mr. Paice
I may not have been in the Committee, but I am perfectly able to read the Hansard report of the sitting. I have done so, but I suspect l hat the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Dowd) has not.
The Opposition have supported the principle behind the Bill, as we made clear on Second Reading—indeed, I called for this measure three years ago—but the Government are again confusing support for a principle with support for the detail of a measure.
210 Many matters arise from the Bill with which the Opposition do not agree, some of which were considered yesterday, such as the definition of rural areas and rural businesses and the level of rateable value. In respect of the latter, the Government advanced rather obscure arguments in favour of the figure of £6,000, but a figure of £9,000 for pubs and petrol stations appeared in secondary legislation only two or three weeks ago. Considerable concern has been expressed about how a shop should be defined. That is the subject of the amendments that we shall debate shortly, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) will move. There was much discussion on Second Reading about the definition of a shop, the fact that takeaway food and confectionery were excluded and what percentage of the business those items could account for if the exclusion was to have effect.
There is also the issue of the Bill's impact on existing businesses. The equestrian sector —riding schools, livery stables, stud farms and many other equestrian activities —will be greatly affected.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is debating the Bill, but we are on the programme motion.

§ Mr. Paice
I am endeavouring to explain why I do not believe that there is sufficient time under the motion, Mr. Speaker, but of course I heed your admonition.
The equestrian sector of rural industry will be seriously affected, yet when the Bill was in Committee yesterday, that sector was debated for only 10 minutes. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) moved an amendment and, almost in the same breath, was persuaded to withdraw it, without any substantial debate having taken place. Yet it has been said on Second Reading and in Committee that the Bill will affect equestrian businesses because the existing businesses, which receive no rate relief other than the traditional stud farm relief—introduced by the previous Government, I am pleased to say—will be competing with new equestrian businesses that will secure the rate relief under the Bill. Nothing in the Bill as it stands corrects that unfair situation. No one could contend that the 10 minutes of debate that this subject received in Committee yesterday was adequate to deal with what everyone accepts is a substantial rural business—indeed, it is the second largest rural business after farming.

§ Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about equestrian businesses. In retrospect, I regret that I was weak enough to accept the rough looks that I was receiving across the Floor. Labour Members had heard that the Prime Minister had gone to Buckingham palace and were so excited by this momentous event that they were determined that the Committee's proceedings would end by lunchtime. In retrospect, I wish that we had given the subject much more time during the afternoon. Not only are these immensely important issues for the countryside, but the rates charged for equestrian businesses are extremely complicated and would have benefited from detailed examination.

§ Mr. Paice
1 am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he knows, I have taken a close interest in the industry ever
211 since I have been a Member of this House because of my constituency involvement with the racing industry. It is a very important sector of the rural economy.
My hon. Friend was persuaded to curtail debate yesterday to some 10 minutes, which he now regrets.

§ Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)
I was talking only today to someone who runs an equestrian centre. The industry is suffering hugely because of the foot and mouth crisis, with bridleways being closed. The lady to whom I spoke is going out of business.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the Bill, not the progyarnme motion.

§ Mr. Leigh
I was just going to say—

§ Mr. Speaker
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was just going to say anything.

§ Mr. Paice
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) will seek to catch your eye later, Mr. Speaker, and may be able to debate the Bill in more detail. A lot of points will need to be made on Third Reading.
The programme motion deals not only with amendments but with the time allocated for Third Reading. My hon. Friends the Members for North Wiltshire and for Gainsborough, who obviously have cogent and important points to make on Third Reading, may be prevented from doing so by the timetable motion.

Mr. Robert Ainsworth
The hon. Gentleman has, among other things, suggested that there was not sufficient time to debate the Bill in Committee. He said that he has read Hansard, despite not being in the Committee. I refer him to the point in the Committee's proceedings when the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) said that there was cross-party consensus that no more time was needed beyond 10 pm. I remind the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) that the Committee finished before 1 pm.

§ Mr. Paice
The Minister falls into his own trap. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire said that there was consensus that there was no need to go beyond 10 pm, yet the business was curtailed at 12.55 pm, which shows that he was right that those matters should have been debated in Committee until 10 pm last night, but were not.

§ Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham)
Is not the Minister making the error, which Ministers habitually make on these occasions, of supposing that the adequacy of consideration in Committee is synonymous with adequacy of consideration on the Floor of the House? I did not have the good fortune to serve on the Committee. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need adequate time to justify our inclusive approach in relation to these matters, compared with the rather narrow, undesirable, priggish exclusivity of the Government?

§ Mr. Paice
The only aspect of my hon. Friend's intervention to which I would take exception is the 212 generality with which he used the word Minister. I would say "Ministers of this Government" because, although my hon. Friend was not in the House at the time, I can assure him that Ministers in the previous Government did not adopt that approach.

§ Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York)
Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow),I did have the honour to serve on the Committee. Does my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) agree that, in tune with what the Father of the House said earlier this afternoon, the true scrutiny role of the House should be performed on the Floor of the House rather than in Committee on an upper corridor?

§ Mr. Paice
That is one of the points on which I did agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) in his farewell statement to the House, although of course I did not agree with everything that he said.
In conclusion, I want to raise a point about abattoirs, which are directly affected by the Bill.

§ Mr. Bercow
Put a few Ministers in them!

§ Mr. Paice
I am sure that there will be a long queue for them if my hon. Friend's desire is met, but the serious point—Third Reading would allow the opportunity to expand on it—is that part of the reason for the foot and mouth crisis and the rapid spread of the disease was the absence of abattoirs.

§ Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston)
You closed them all.

§ Mr. Paice
I can assure the hon. Gentleman, who shouts from a sedentary position, that the rate of closure under his party's Government is substantially higher than it was under the previous Government.
The crucial point is that the Bill will affect abattoirs, partly because it is the farmers and the farm business premises that may be currently consigning animals to abattoirs, but also because many farmers may wish to use the provisions of the Bill to gain—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has dispensed with the programme motion and is talking about the Bill, but we can talk only about the programme motion at the moment.

§ Mr. Paice
I am grateful, Mr. Speaker.
I contend that the programme motion does not provide adequate time to cover all the points that should be made, both in ways—

§ Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde)
Will my hon. Friend give way?

§ Mr. Paice
I will just finish the point.
The motion does not provide adequate time to debate the amendments, which my right hon. Friend will deal with, or to debate all the arguments that should he debated on Third Reading, which are beginning to come in a flurry from my right hon. and hon. Friends.

§ Mr. Jack
Does my hon. Friend agree that the very fact that we have amendments to debate, and indeed a Third 213 Reading to consider, offers us the opportunity for mature reflection on arguments that were put, albeit inadequately, in Committee, hence the fact that this evening we are now faced with further amendments to the Bill, justifying a greater amount of time than the two hours offered by the Government?

§ Mr. Paice
My right hon. Friend is entirely right. In Committee, the Minister promised to take away some items and consider them further, and I do not believe that the two hours that we have been allocated is adequate, particularly in view of the fact that Ministers have only had from yesterday morning until today to consider those items. We are under pressure to pass the Bill before dissolution. Tomorrow, the Bill will go to another place and is expected to pass through all its stages in order to receive Royal Assent before Dissolution. Therefore, we shall lose the opportunity that is norm ally allowed for any legislation, which may not be given proper scrutiny in the House, to go to the other place for more in-depth scrutiny, using the expertise that we all know exists there.

§ Mr. Jack
Has my hon. Friend considered the fact that the Minister may have a rather restricted view on the amount of time needed by virtue of his former incarnation as a Government Whip? As we all know, the Government Whips' objective is to get business through the House at any cost.

§ Mr. Paice
My right hon. Friend's experience of those matters tells in such debates. Not all hon. Members necessarily share his cynicism, but I can vouchsafe that I do, having been a Member as long as he has and having seen the machinations of the dark corners of the Whips Office. I understand that the business takes precedence, rather than any propriety in scrutinising legislation.
The Bill is important in itself. We welcome it in principle, but believe that it should be given greater scrutiny on Report, on Third Reading and in the other place. I regret very much that the Government have seen fit to introduce a two-hour timetable. Given that we are still at a very early stage of the night's proceedings compared with what we were used to only a few years ago, there could have easily been time to give the Bill the far greater scrutiny that it will not now be given. That is a great shame, but there are many points that my hon. Friends and I wish to make in debating the amendments and on Third Reading, and we shall demonstrate the validity of the arguments that I have adduced against the motion.

§ Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome)
This is, by common consent on both sides of Me House, a modest Bill. It is limited in scope, flawed in detail, late in formulation and even more dilatory in execution, but with all its manifest inadequacies, it is important and should reach the statute book before Parliament is dissolved. I do not believe that we should take up the time that our constituents properly expect us to spend debating what is—or is not —in the Bill with a sterile argument on process. I urge the House to move on to the debate on the Bill itself. Let us pass it into law at the earliest opportunity because, however inadequate, it is better than nothing.

§ Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire)
I rise to contribute briefly to the programme motion debate on this modest Bill, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) rightly describes it, for two reasons. First, as I said a moment ago, in retrospect, I am sorry that yesterday's debates in Committee were so sharply curtailed. Hon. Members will remember that there was an atmosphere of excitement as the helicopters hovered overhead and the Prime Minister made his stately way down the Mall to visit Her Majesty the Queen to request the Dissolution of Parliament. There was a general feeling in Committee that sitting around for an afternoon discussing such matters was not the right thing to do. 1 regret that I gave in to that feeling and allowed my remarks on important matters connected with the horse industry to be limited to only 10 minutes.
Perhaps I should declare an interest: I am the chairman of the horse and pony taxation committee—an informal committee of the House, established by my noble Friend Lord Cope of Berkeley, who will wish to take a close interest in the Bill's equestrian provisions when it is debated in the other House tomorrow. Furthermore, I am an unpaid consultant to the British Horse Industry Confederation, a body that brings together all the interests of the horse industry throughout the nation. The Bill's provisions will have a significant effect on that industry; we have been debating such matters in the committee and the confederation for many years. As long ago as 1987, we nearly brought in an amendment to the Finance Bill that would have changed the status of the horse on farms to that of an agricultural animal, thereby removing business rates from all buildings in which horses were accommodated. These are complex matters and we in the horse industry are concerned about elements of the Bill that will help the industry in some respects but that may be worrying in others.

§ Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington)
What does that have to do with the programme motion?

§ Mr. Gray
Although programme motions have only recently been invented, I am surprised that after his many years in this place, the hon. Gentleman does not understand the relevance of my comments. The answer is that the amendment that we tabled on equestrian matters has not been selected. That means that the only detailed discussions took place yesterday when, sadly —in retrospect, I regret it—I curtailed my remarks on that complex subject. I thus seek extensive time on Third Reading to discuss those matters. Unfortunately, only two hours to discuss everything—the programme motion, amendments and Third Reading — is not enough to discuss extraordinarily complex matters.
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman knows anything about the business rate regime in so far as it affects horse matters on farms. It is extraordinarily difficult, delicate and complex. Broadly speaking, it achieves cross-party consensus. We are talking about riding schools throughout the nation. We are not talking about something grand but about something very ordinary: horse matters in all our constituencies.
It is thus a matter of great regret that neither in Committee yesterday nor, because of the programme motion in the House today, shall we have any time to 215 discuss such complex matters as how riding schools have declined in recent years. Every year, 200 riding schools disappear because of the tax and rating system that we shall debate later.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
What has that got to do with the programme motion?

§ Mr. Gray
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not understand by now but I shall try again. It is important that I should explain how complex such matters are so that it should be clearly understood that we do not have enough time to discuss them. If they were small and simple, we could discuss them in a few seconds, but because they are difficult, and because he does not have the faintest idea of them, I must explain that we do not have enough time.

§ Mr. Leigh
What my hon. Friend's comments have to do with time is this: as riding stables go out of business every day of the week and as the industry is in crisis, the House should be given time to debate these matters to bring them to the attention of Ministers and to try to put pressure on them. The industry accounts for 6 per cent. of the total work force. There is minimal—indeed, no—compensation. We need time to discuss that. Again and again, the Government ram through programme motions—two hours here, one hour there. That is not good enough. People are not being properly represented.

§ Mr. Gray
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point well. In this country, 2.4 million people ride horses; 1 million horses are kept. The equestrian industry is the second largest in the countryside. We are talking about—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait until we discuss the Bill before he tells us how many equestrian exercises are going on throughout the country.

§ Mr. Gray
Of course, Mr. Speaker, I will happily do so.
The business rate regime covering equestrian businesses in the countryside is badly flawed; there are peculiar anomalies. For example, if a private stable is next door to one's house—attached by a wall—it is exempt from business rates in the countryside. If, however, the private stable is at some distance from the house, it is not exempt and one has to pay business rates on it even though it is an entirely private—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I point out again to the hon. Gentleman that that has nothing to do with the programme motion. He must wait until we move on to the Bill to tell us those interesting facts.

§ Mr. Gray
I understand, Mr. Speaker.
The point that I was making—albeit inadequately as I am inexperienced in such matters-is that the two hours available to deal with the whole process, including amendments on village shops and Third Reading, are wildly inadequate for covering the complex detail of the rating regime as it affects equestrian businesses in the 216 countryside. However, I think that we have had an opportunity to make that reasonably clear. That brings us back to the process—
It being Ten o'clock, MR. SPEAKER proceeded to put forthwith the Questions relating to Estimates which he was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (Questions on voting of estimates, &c.) and Order [this day].