Yesterday the new High Street’s Minister, Brandon Lewis, came to the despatch box for Opposition Day in the House of Commons to debate, at Labour’s request, zero hour contracts, high streets and changes to use orders.

Yesterday the new High Street’s Minister, Brandon Lewis, came to the despatch box for Opposition Day in the House of Commons to debate, at Labour’s request, zero hour contracts, high streets and changes to use orders.

Given that we had September’s RPI inflation figure of 3.2% just a day earlier - on which business rates are calculated - it was unsurprising that business rates became a feature of the debate.

Would there be a softening of approach from the Minister given it was his decision late last year to postpone the 2015 revaluations to 2017? No. He stuck to his guns and defended what has now become known to some within the industry as the “dodgy dossier”.

Mr Lewis proudly proclaimed at the despatch box that “the biggest beneficiaries from a 2015 revaluation would not have been small shops…but prime office space in London”.

The dossier claimed that a revaluation in 2015 would have reduced tax liability for London offices by £440m. In fact, it is apparent that the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has overestimated the effect of a 2015 revaluation on London offices and that most office occupiers in the City of London would have paid more as a consequence of a 2015 revaluation.

The Government has attempted to justify postponement by claiming that “800,000 premises would see a real-terms rise in their rates bill, where only 300,000 premises would see their bill fall” in a 2015 revaluation. It further alleges, without any evidence, that “smaller and medium firms [were] likely to be harder hit”.

The purpose of a rates revaluation is to achieve fairness of tax liabilities by ensuring rateable values are based upon up-to-date rental values and therefore to redistribute liability in line with relative movements in property values since the previous revaluation. As a consequence, revaluations create winners and losers, and delaying the revaluation creates unfairness by requiring struggling businesses to subsidise those that have fared relatively better.

Property taxes need to have regular and reasonably frequent revaluations to maintain fairness and acceptability – the five-year gap has been accepted since 1990 and has generally been viewed as the maximum appropriate period. Current rates liabilities are based on rental values as at April 2008, since when rents have since fallen by an average of 14% across the country according to the VOA. April 2008 marked the high water mark for rental values in secondary and tertiary areas which, after several years of outperformance, have since collapsed.

In broad terms, the effect of the two-year postponement, therefore, will be to transfer wealth from struggling places where rents have fallen by more than 14% to successful businesses, many of which are in London.

It is worth noting that no business or business organisation was consulted on, or has voiced support for these proposals.

Independent evidence and the work of rating specialists outside the VOA cause us to be extremely sceptical about the Government’s statements. Indeed, even on its own terms, the VOA data contains no justification or support for the claim that 800,000 premises would have seen increases. Based on what can be reasonably inferred from the VOA’s estimates and the evidence it says it has collected, about 350,000 premises would see their bills fall, and about 377,400 premises would see their bills rise.

Rental data shows that some of the sharpest rental falls have been seen in high street retail, particularly in towns and regions that have struggled since 2008. Forcing these areas to pay artificially high business rates for an additional two years will undermine the Government’s attempt to address the high street decline.

The collapse in retail rents outside of the capital’s prime retailing locations is endemic with falls in Zone A rentals of 20.6% in England outside of London and on average by 31% in towns across Greater Manchester, for example.

I’m sorry Minister, you are wrong.

Paul Turner-Mitchell is a business rates expert and helped to write the Grimsey Review into rescuing UK high streets.