Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place previously, but if he had listened to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said in reply to a similar point, he would have heard him explain that the decision on council tax was taken on a different basis in Wales to raise extra money. That is not the Government’s position. There is a difference, and we are not allowed to talk about that anyway, are we, Madam Deputy Speaker? The other issue that we should consider in deferring the revaluation of council tax is its efficiency. People have been very careful and accurate to describe the council tax as a property-based tax. Of course, it is a property-based tax, but it also has an element, which is left over from some of the thoughts on the poll tax, that is related to the number of people in the household. People are entitled to a 25 per cent. discount if they live on their own. Although this might not be completely fair, I have collated two sets of statistics on the matter, which indicate that there is a problem with the council tax and its revaluation. Some 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register. It is my contention—I have some evidence for this—that a large percentage of the people in my constituency who are not on the electoral register are avoiding paying council tax. When we consider the revaluation of council tax, it is important to know how many people pay it and how many others are ever likely to pay it. I have checked the situation regarding the houses in one of my inner-city wards. It turns out that there is a ratio of two women to one man, but if one walks around the streets of that polling district, one realises that the ratio is 50:50. The conclusion is fairly obvious: a certain degree of council tax evasion is going on, which the Electoral Commission has picked up through its study of how many people have not registered on the electoral register. If we are considering deferring the revaluation, we must look at the basic efficiency of the council tax. It is considerably more efficient than the poll tax, but not as efficient as the domestic rates were. I know that you will not allow me to stray on to the functions of local government, Madam Deputy Speaker, but local government has shrunk. Parts of it have been pushed into quangos such as learning and skills councils and regional development agencies—Conservative Members probably have a list of them. The Conservatives were responsible for some such quangos and this Government have been responsible for others. We must consider not only the weight of democracy that the council tax can support, which is not that much, but the democracy that it should support. Given the two contradictory problems of the inefficiency of the council tax and the fact that little of it is determined locally, and what I would like to see coming back to local government, I am happy to support a deferral of the revaluation of council tax because it will be no friend to that property-based tax. I hope that Lyons will understand such things and look at the problem thoroughly, instead of just taking instructions to say that we should strip so much out of local government and destroy more local democracy because that is all that council tax will bear. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) did some knockabout stuff at the beginning of the debate, which was understandable in a Second Reading debate—some of it was quite witty and funny. However, the Conservatives changed their policies on local democracy, which were disastrous in the late 1980s and 1990s, so all of us should try to reach a consensus on finance and function in local democracy. I say in all sincerity to Conservative Members that we should treat the deferral of the revaluation of council tax as a serious opportunity.