Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

The hon. Gentleman has considerable expertise in the matter, but he would have been advised to listen to what Members say in the House. I said that the purpose of a revaluation was to take care of distortions in the property market, and I demonstrated clearly that no distortion has taken place. By and large, over the past 10 years property values have realigned, and matters could be taken care of by adjusting the banding. That is an established fact. The imbalance between central and local government funding grows, which will force Ministers towards crude and universal capping in the vain hope that public ignorance of—