Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I quite agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As you will have noticed, I was meaning to go on without mentioning the absence of Government Members, but I was led astray by my right hon. Friend. May I suggest, however, that the debate has been extremely valuable, and that you have missed a great treat by not having been in the Chair for most of it? At stake is an issue of huge importance, concerning the complex way in which the local government impost relates to the central Government grant. The difficulty that my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has addressed in his amendment is the difficulty that anybody has in understanding why the council tax in his particular locality is what it is. Council tax is subject to three differing pressures, one of which my hon. Friend has tried to address. The first, of course, is what the Government decide is a suitable sum for that local authority to have in grant. The second is what the local authority decides is a suitable sum to raise in council tax. The third is the incidence of that council tax as spread over the whole area. My hon. Friend talked about the Government’s determination in the Bill. I agree with that determination, and I only wish that the Government had agreed with me on the hustings in my constituency, when I explained so clearly why a revaluation would be entirely wrong at that time. I was told by my opponent, who belonged—and, I think, still does belong—to the Labour party, that a valuation was essential. As a country councillor, he was determined to explain to me that I did not understand the issue, and why we had to have a valuation. Now I understand that it was not essential, and that despite being a county councillor, he was wrong. I only hope that the Minister has written to him to explain how foolish he was to have accepted that doctrine from the Labour party during the election campaign. Now there will not be a revaluation for the foreseeable future. However, in certain specific parts of the country there will be significant, untoward, out-of-kilter changes for houses that have been built relatively recently. That will cause real local problems, for which the Minister has no remedy—and my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley has been trying to produce a remedy for him.