The Earl of Lytton (CB)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments for the support, some of it qualified, for the amendments that I have put forward. I do not wish to labour the point, especially as the temperature in this Room seems to continue to drop and my feet are getting extremely cold. To pick up the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox—that the size of hereditament does not equate with ability to pay—some of our most marginal and most valuable operations operate right on the limit. I hear what the Minister says about the difficulties of dealing with this; I have to say that I do not share his view. We already have two lists: we have a general rating list, and we have a central rating list, and there is no reason why the Government could not split it into more than that if they chose to do so. As I said earlier, when it comes to a digitised list, one can fiddle around with it in all sorts of ways. We are talking about 16,500, or some such number, of entries with a rateable value of £500,000 and above. I would have liked to have had a pointer that the Government sort of get this and want to move more rapidly to, first, making the present system more flexible and responsive and, secondly, that we can have some pointer to where this is going in terms of reforming the whole business rates system. However, that is clearly an argument for another day. My last point, an entirely frivolous one, is that the contents of the various groups of amendments gets smaller henceforward. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.