Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I shall not refer to Second Reading, Madam Deputy Speaker, as it is a verboten subject, but I am sorry that my hon. Friend thinks that my support for his amendment is misplaced. It gives one the opportunity to point out just how unjust the present system is and how unfairly it impinges on particular billing areas and councils and particular groups of people in those areas. The other part of my hon. Friend’s amendment has great virtue, as it would enable the revaluation process to be carried out incrementally—if it has to be carried out at all. Having studied the Valuation Office Agency report, I was horrified, as it shows that an enormous number of staff were taken on for the national revaluation and, despite the fact that the Government have said that there will be no national revaluation during the lifetime of this Parliament, a large number of those extra staff are still in post, because the VOA has a no-redundancy policy. The Minister is grimacing, but I can illustrate what I said by reference to figures from the VOA annual report and accounts for 2004–05. On page 29, the VOA crows about the fact that it has taken 1,200 extra staff to deal with the national revaluation, yet the Minister told the Standing Committee, that as a result of the Government’s decision not to go ahead with the revaluation, there had been a number of redundancies. However, the number fell far short of the 1,200 extra staff taken on during the last financial year. He said:"““The immediate impact is that some 420 staff working on casual and fixed-term contracts will leave the agency by this Friday.””" I think that was the Friday before last. He continued:"““The agency is also running an early departure scheme for permanent employees””—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 15 November 2005; c. 24.]—"