Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I shall deal with that point now. Let us contrast such revaluations with the revaluation of business rates. Since business rates were nationalised in 1990, we have stuck to five-yearly revaluations, which have been supported by all those affected. Their argument is not that because no big changes have occurred in a given five-year period, there should be no revaluation. Rather, the argument is that if comparatively small changes in relative values occur under a system of regular revaluations, the impact of each revaluation is not so massive, be it on businesses or those occupying domestic property. If we argue that we do not need a revaluation because—allegedly—there has not been a big change in relative property prices in the past 14 or 15 years, and if we have revaluations only when there is a massive change in the relative prices of property, the danger is that the impact will be huge, with a lot of winners and a lot of losers. Under such a system, it will become virtually impossible for a Government of any colour to proceed with that revaluation.