Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes his point aggressively, but when the council tax was set up by a Conservative Government after the failure of the poll tax, a large gearing effect was inherent in its structure because most of the money for local government came from central Government. The hon. Gentleman should not be quite so aggressive about a point that relates to the consequence of the Conservative Government’s policies of 10 or 12 years ago. The issue before the House is relative simple. In a sense, one could say that one agrees with it or does not agree with it. It is whether the revaluation of council tax should be deferred and the power handed over to the Secretary of State to determine whether that should happen. If that were all that was being asked of the House, the answer should be no. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) made a perfectly good point, as did two Labour Members, for regular revaluations. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) said that the longer the revaluation is left, the more a property-based tax is undermined. What surprises me about the debate is that Labour and Opposition Members think that that is necessarily a bad thing while the Lyons review is considering the functions and finance of local government. I do not necessarily think that it is a bad idea because the council tax was introduced in a panic after the Conservative party had politically assassinated a Prime Minister. The poll tax, which Conservatives introduced because they had failed to revalue the previous rating system, turned out to be probably the most unpopular tax that this country had seen in the previous 200 years. The council tax itself was better than the poll tax—the community charge—but is it something that, 12 years on, Labour and Opposition Members should be going to the barricades to defend? I think not. That is why I will vote in the Lobby tonight with my hon. Friends who sit on the Front Bench. If we were simply asked whether giving the Secretary of State the power always to determine when a property-based tax should be revalued was a good thing, I would say that, on its own, it was not. However, in the light of the Lyons review of form and function, it is just about justifiable to look at the situation 12 years after the council tax was introduced, after many changes have been made in local government structures and when some are still in the pipeline. I do not want to stray too far off the point—this relates to the Government’s argument about why we should delay the revaluation—but at the bottom of the debate lies what we think local democracy’s future is in this country. The simple answer, which is difficult to reach, is that local people in cities, towns and shires should be able to take decisions about the matters that they want to determine and that they can relate to, and they should be able to raise a lot of that tax locally themselves. We have got the balance wrong in this country, when only between 20 and 25 per cent. of tax is raised by the council tax, and when, if taxation is considered across the board, 2 or 3 per cent. of tax is the responsibility of local democracy.