Part of the debate – in the House of Lords am 4:30 pm ar 19 Mehefin 2018.
My Lords, this is an interesting group of amendments. My amendment in this group is Amendment 6, which simply seeks to increase to 200% the amount of extra council tax that can be levied on an empty property. We all agree that we want to bring long-term empty properties back into use, and these amendments would give local authorities the discretion to use these powers.
Having said that, I very much like Amendment 5, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock; it provides for an escalator, which I think works very well. The longer a property was empty, the more you would potentially pay, and that could be a good incentive to get people to bring their empty property back into use. I also like Amendment 7, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which would take account of whether people had spent money on their property to make it more energy efficient. The increase would be discounted or reduced to take account of that, and that seems a very sensible thing to do. Amendment 10 is just a tidying-up amendment.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that these are interesting ideas. Perhaps if we could all get together and have a discussion and we brought something back on Report, the Government might support it. I think that there is something here that could improve the Bill dramatically.