Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I am delighted to have the opportunity to support the Conservative amendment. I see nothing confusing about it at all. It draws attention to the inequalities that are being created across the United Kingdom and calls for revaluation to be completely abandoned. I have no problem with either of those two concepts. I have seen at first hand how unequal things are becoming in my constituency of Monmouth. I heard the figure bandied around earlier of a 94 per cent. rise in one constituency. We would be very pleased if we had council tax rises of 94 per cent. over the past few years in my constituency. Someone else mentioned a rise of 74 per cent. There would be parties in the streets had our council tax rises been limited to 74 per cent. Prior to any re-banding in Monmouthshire, band D council taxes rose on average by well over 130 per cent. That is a truly shocking measure of the inequalities that are already being created before re-banding takes place. Obviously, therefore, I will speak against any form of re-banding. The Minister earlier repeated the oft-made claim that council taxes have absolutely nothing to do with central Government. In a rather long speech, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) made one point with which I fully agreed: few people seem to understand how local government funding works, and that seems to apply to Ministers, who state that central Government policies have nothing to do with it. If a hypothetical local authority were run on a budget of £100 a year, around £80 would come from central Government in Westminster or, in Wales, from the Welsh Assembly; only £20 would be collected in council tax. Council tax simply tops up the money that local authorities receive from central Government. If minor adjustments were made to the amount coming from central Government—let us say that, in our hypothetical council, the £80 became £78, a drop of less than 2 per cent.—council taxes would have to go up by 10 per cent., from £20 to £22, to make up the difference. That is the so-called gearing effect, which has caused disproportionate council tax rises in the past few years.