It was good to see MPs in their droves yesterday backing the BRC’s call for a fundamental overhaul of business rates.

The problems with the system are so far reaching and such a disincentive to retailers, they need much more than just tinkering around the edges.

But the consortium’s accompanying announcement that it had been forced to think again about some of its specific plans for a potential replacement was both sadly predictable and a sign of the huge barriers facing those fighting for reform.

It signals the end of short-lived plans for a new energy tax, which the BRC had argued could be a fairer way for businesses to prop up the Treasury.

Ideas for a new system based on employment levels and on corporation tax also went into the shredder. While perhaps not as far fetched as the proposed green tax, they too were found by the BRC to carry more potential problems than advantages.

It was always going to be unlikely that any government, let alone one in the build-up to a knife-edge election, would replace a tried and trusted income generator with an entirely new and untested form of tax.

As it is, even Labour’s announcement yesterday that it would order a shake-up of rates to allow all the income generated to be held by councils in powerful new city and county regions still relies on a system that four out of five MPs admit is broken.

After – probably wisely – changing tack, the BRC has to somehow convince the next government that changes to rates must go much further than simply a review of the methodology, although it admits there is not going to be one “big bang moment”.

Realistically it is looking like the option it least wanted – reform of the existing system – is the only one on the table, and even that won’t happen until after the big vote next May.

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