Labour are sitting by whilst watching hundreds of vital port jobs and businesses go to the wall because of their own pernicious backdating of a tax and a catalogue of farcical bungling by the government’s Valuation Office Agency (VOA).
It is symptomatic of a government in meltdown that even faced with the strongest evidence of their own errors, and the appalling consequences of these errors, that Cabinet ministers are fighting like ferrets in a sack over who was to blame.
Week after week good businesses are going under because of a self-inflicted own-goal by the government and no-one seems to have the grip, or the courage, to act.
This fiasco started in 2005 when it was agreed that port owners would no longer be liable for collection of business rates in their port areas and that each portside operator would be individually assessed by the Valuation Office Agency – fair enough.
The problem is that the VOA told the Treasury they had done the assessments in 2005 but they did not actually do the assessments until the end of 2008. Mistakes happen, the VOA apologised and it was assumed that it would be agreed that the previous arrangements would be kept in place until the individual assessments were completed. This was not so, and demands for backdated tax of over £200 million were sent out to over 1600 companies already weathering the worst recession for sixty years.
We are a trading nation, and 95% of our visible trade as a nation is imported or exported via our sea ports. The economic health of our ports is as vital a component of our economic infrastructure every bit as much as the banking system. Whilst the government is pouring billions into the banks the government won’t even raise a finger to help the port businesses keep afloat even when it was they who shoved them overboard in the first place.
The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson MP wrote to the minister responsible John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government in July this year stating: “These businesses are damaged by a government that on the one hand is looking for ways to help small businesses through the recession whilst at the same time is imposing a completely unfair retrospective system that will destroy jobs and put these companies out of business…The VOA has committed an egregious error, failed in its duties and failed to obey its instructions given by Government.”
Fine words in private by the Home Secretary, but there is no action in public. Hence, this evening it will again fall again to the Conservatives to speak up for our port-side businesses and defend dockers’ jobs. We will do this with vigour because their cause is just, their contribution is vital and their treatment at the hands of this government has been utterly shameful.
( 1 comments ) Tags: Home Secretary, trade, Treasury, VOA
Comment by WheresMyVote on October 14, 2009 at 5:05 pm
oh look, a change in the rules being applied retrospectively. Now where have I heard approximately 645 people complaining that that sort of thing really isn’t on?