Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Remarkably, this is the only Bill to emerge from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in more than a year. We must assume that the Department has been very busy with other matters. If this is the total production of 9,000 staff and two Cabinet Ministers, we need to ask some serious questions about the use of resources. Let us face it: there is not much to the Bill. It proposes postponing revaluation for the present because the Government think that it might be politically unpopular. The tragedy is that, to cover that giant U-turn, they have also postponed Sir Michael Lyons’s review of local government finance. Is it not embarrassing for Ministers to present the Bill as the sole outcome of nearly three years of reviews of local government finance? The first review, back in 2003, recommended a review of a review. As far as I remember, the review of a review was supposed to evaluate revaluation. Now the Government have reviewed the review of the review evaluating revaluation until such time as they can review the review of the review’s review to revalue. I cannot help thinking that when the review of the review finally gets around to reviewing the review on revaluation, the Government’s response will be to set up yet another review. I know that it is dangerous to rush into decisions, but this must be the most reviewed act of dithering that we have ever known. Debates on issues such as this tend to attract quite a small crowd, and we usually see the same few faces. That means that those in the Chamber should understand better than anyone else that local government matters, and that local government finance matters. Yet today we shall spend hours arguing about the essentially technical issue of the date on which property values should be fixed for council tax purposes, rather than asking any of the more difficult questions. We should be asking how much tax should be raised locally, what taxes local government should have power to levy, and how much freedom local government should have to spend its own money. We shall discuss none of those issues in detail, however; we shall have the same fatuous debate that we have had before. We shall rehearse arguments that have already taken place. I find the Conservatives’ position bizarre. We have discussed many times before whether they want to cancel or postpone revaluation. In the course of a single speech, I heard two separate views. They have said that they want to postpone revaluation, but oppose the Bill in their amendment because it does not cancel revaluation. We will hear the same arguments again and again. The Government will try to make a virtue out of a U-turn, and will not commit themselves to anything in particular. That strikes me as a terribly wasted opportunity.