Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, the problem with revaluation should bother the two parties in the House that are in favour of a property tax. The need for revaluation cannot be denied by those who favour that sort of tax. It never has been denied from the Conservative Benches until recently. My problem with the Bill is that the proposed mechanism allows the Secretary of State a bare discretion to refuse to revalue in any particular year or for ever, so the political reasons for failing to revalue always outweigh the technical reasons. That lacks fundamental transparency. I ask the Government to consider an amendment to the Bill that would do the following things. First, the Secretary of State should have a duty from time to time to consider whether he should use the power that the Bill grants him. Secondly, when considering whether to use the power, he should be under an obligation to give reasons as to why that power was not exercised in any particular year. Thirdly, those reasons should include an assessment of the variation in property values that has taken place since the previous revaluation. That would allow us all to see whether the Government’s decision not to go for a revaluation on any particular occasion was justified technically or was merely following a political imperative. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that. For the Liberal Democrats, the Bill is neither here nor there. We would never use the power that it grants—the power to revalue—because we would scrap the council tax system at the earliest possible opportunity. I support the Bill, but only because we would do away with the possibility of revaluation completely as part of a radical reform of local government taxation. The Bill forms one tiny part of what we will do if and when we come to power.