Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

My constituents would be angry with the Government for using such perverse reasoning. My right hon. Friend identifies what I see as a weakness in the amendment, but it is not such a weakness that we should not support it today. The amendment demonstrates some lateral thinking about how to try to introduce greater fairness into the system, rather than leaving things drifting under this Government. The prospects are that council tax will continue to increase way beyond the rate of inflation, and will increase by a higher rate in small district council areas such as Christchurch and East Dorset than in the metropolitan, urban areas that used to be regarded as Labour heartlands. There is a problem, and I am not saying that the amendment is the perfect solution to it, but it contains the prospect of introducing some increased fairness. A revaluation in Christchurch or East Dorset would show which houses had increased in value by more than the average for the area, and which had increased by a lower proportion. The bills that were issued could then be adjusted to reflect that new equity. That should be a zero sum game within each local authority area, because otherwise we would end up having to pay much higher bills because of the redistributive effects of the national grant system. Provided that it was a zero sum game, such a measure might have a role to play within an individual local authority area. The Secretary of State might decide which local authorities to include, but he might also want to start off by saying that the pensioners are really the ones complaining most about the unfair burden of council tax, and that, therefore, in all local authority billing areas where the proportion of the population aged 65 and over is higher than, say, 25 per cent., there should be revaluation to see whether the burden on pensioner households could be reduced. At the moment, the council tax is essentially a stealth wealth tax, and the value of properties is being used as a proxy for ability to pay. We know jolly well that the ability to pay of many pensioner households is very small.