Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That was precisely the point that I was making. I welcome the Minister’s commitment, in introducing the debate, to a continued role for a property tax in the funding of local government. I welcome it because a property tax is predictable, collectable and just—albeit sometimes a rough justice. I urge Ministers to pass the message back to the Lyons review about the vital need for a much wider range of sources of funding for local government. A property tax undoubtedly has its place, but we need a wider range of sources so that the funding that local government receives from central Government becomes a diminishing proportion of its total expenditure. It is certainly not healthy for local government to depend, as it increasingly has in recent years, on central Government funding. That is not healthy for local democracy, so we need a much higher proportion of local government funds to be raised locally if we are to increase the accountability of local government to local people.