Finally, a business rates reform! If only I knew what it meant

This column has repeatedly cried that something must be done about business rates. Yes, it’s fair to ask businesses, as well as individual citizens, to contribute to local public-sector provision — even though businesses can’t vote. But it was far from fair during the recession to go on collecting £26 billion a year from hard-pressed firms based on an arbitrary multiplier applied to out-of-date rental valuations, in many cases long after those values had slumped to the point at which the rates were a higher cost than the rents.

The same firms were being charged all over again for basic services such as refuse disposal, and complaints that the system was poisoning small-business growth and town-centre regeneration were greeted by ministers only with issue-ducking deferrals of overdue revaluations. When I argued two years ago that ‘an across-the-board cut in the business-rates multiplier would swiftly pay for itself — and more — through new jobs, better profits and the taxes they generate’, no one seemed to be listening.