Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

We have a rather bizarre debate. On the one hand, the Government are introducing a Bill to postpone revaluation, while stating that they want revaluation to take place. I hope that revaluation is postponed, rather than cancelled or kicked into the far-distant long grass, because it is an important part of continuing with a property-based tax. The Government are changing the 2003 Act in order to retain revaluation. The Opposition, on the other hand, have tabled a reasoned amendment opposing Second Reading, which would simply cause the revaluation to go ahead. If Conservative Members vote for the Opposition amendment tonight, they will vote for revaluation. There is no point in their shaking their heads: if Labour Members decide to go home rather than voting in the Chamber tonight and the Conservatives by some mischance win the vote, the relevant section of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as amended by the Local Government Act 2003, will stay in place and revaluation will go ahead. Furthermore, no one can stop revaluation going ahead in those circumstances, because the provision is on the statute book. Conservative Members must be careful. My party does not do this kind of thing, but if a ““Focus”” leaflet were produced stating, ““Local Conservatives vote for revaluation””, it would be perfectly fair. ““Focus”” leaflets are not always fair, but the example I have described would be. Conservative Members, who are looking rather glum, would be well advised to get their own statement out explaining the true reason why they voted for a revaluation that they do not want. The Conservative party does not want revaluation—not now, not ever—and it has boxed itself in by stating that it will cancel it. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) made an extremely strange comment to the effect that he does not mean ““not ever””, but, because property prices have converged, there is not a circumstance under which revaluation is necessary. If property prices were to deconverge, the Conservative party would presumably review its policy, but let us take its position on cancelling council tax revaluation as being fairly firm. In its local government manifesto in spring 2004, the Conservative party said that it will not introduce any new or higher bandings, so it is boxed in on revaluation and the present bandings. It has said that banding would be the only way in which local government could raise money under a Conservative Government, because it will block taxes other than council tax from entering the local government arena. It also made it clear in its local government manifesto 2004 that it is against local income tax and any other form of transfer tax, so it favours one unchanged, unrebanded tax based on 1992 property values, which is a strange policy. One of the problems with the Conservative policy of not rebanding is that, as other hon. Members have said, a council tax base that is not revalued will drift further and further away from actual property values over a period of time. The Conservative Opposition want to enter government with a tax that progressively bears less and less relation to the actual value of property. If one were cynical—as I have said, that is not my position—one would say that that policy would serve some people rather well, because, assuming that house prices continue to inflate, as taxes drift further and further away from real property values, so a larger and larger number of people will be in a band in which no one pays any more council tax, regardless of increases in property values. Perhaps the thinking is driven by the political party that people in those bands tend to support. As a method of securing a flat tax that is unrelated to real value—we have heard about flat taxes in recent European elections—the Conservative proposition may be interesting, but in reality the situation is more complicated than that. Over a period of time, high property prices will mean not only that the highest band fails to differentiate between properties in certain parts of the country, but that different sets of flat taxes apply in different parts of the country, because property values will continue to rise at different rates.