Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

My hon. Friend has huge knowledge of the way in which local government works and I am hesitant to contradict him. The way of the world, however, is that a revaluation will put considerable pressure on a local authority to increase council tax. To stick to the mechanism whereby council tax should not go up, if the revaluation causes an increase in the entire list the rate of council tax would have to go down. I cannot imagine many councils explaining to their council tax payers that they have put the rate of council tax down in order to keep the council tax the same. The way of the world is that the valuation would go up and the council tax rate would stay the same, so the actual amount payable would go up. I do not know whether my hon. Friend wants to come back on that point—he is shaking his head. It is not necessary. There we are. The whole purpose of this kind of debate is to get differences of opinion out in the open—parler, to speak, is what Parliament is all about. I am pleased to take part in this debate. I have almost come to the end of my speech, but suffice it to say that when the Lyons’ committee comes to report on this matter—next year, I gather, in tranches—I hope that the Government will take it very seriously. We have had some excellent debate this evening. There is a lot of merit in the principle proposed by my hon. Friend—that there should be an ability to have local revaluations, provided that it is under the democratic control of locally elected councillors. I hope that the Lyons’ report will deal with that matter. Before I conclude, I want to deal with the problem of appeals. At the moment, appeals only take place in the categories that I have mentioned. Were there either a local or national revaluation, however there would be a lot more appeals. That would increase the work of the Valuation Office Agency, and perhaps it would be useful to sub-contract that to the private sector, too. Appeals take time, cost money and cause a lot of angst to our constituents, so we should try to get valuation lists accurate. Where changes do not take place for individual streets and houses within individual streets, whatever revaluation takes place under my hon. Friend’s proposal or any future Government proposal the number of individual differentials could be kept to a minimum and the number of appeals reduced.