Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I intended to raise because it is the second reason for my concern about the amendment. I have reservations about the amendment’s drafting because the power is too broad. I would be more inclined to support it if it were drawn so that revaluation could take place only when a request had been made from the bottom up—from the relevant authority or authorities. I hope that I have made my first worry clear. My second concern relates to growth, which several hon. Members mentioned, including my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire and my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, South and for St. Albans (Anne Main). I am a Thames gateway Member of Parliament, but the point does not apply only to that area. Some of my hon. Friends have argued that an area of especially high growth might give the local authority an incentive to revalue. I understand the logic of that but it is no secret that, in some of the proposed high growth areas, there is much local resistance to the amount of house building that the Government want. That is true of parts of the Thames gateway and I believe it to be true of the other growth areas that have been mentioned. If we allowed local authorities to revalue specifically in those areas on the basis of growth, residents and council tax payers might feel that they were being doubly punished. Not only would they be asked to accept all the additional housing—to which many constituents and I are resistant—and the attendant pressures on infrastructure, which I do not need to repeat in case I stray out of order; all hon. Members are familiar with the arguments, but they would also get a revaluation thrown in. That is not likely to be popular with residents and council tax payers even if the local authority wanted a revaluation for understandable financial reasons. However, people just over the border of the development area would not have to accept so many houses, suffer the infrastructure pressures or get the revaluation thrown in.