Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We also had some interesting exchanges in a short but nevertheless productive Committee stage. Sadly, however, the sensible debate in the House of the principles of revaluation and the relative merits of different timings—and indeed of local area revaluations, the subject of the amendment moved earlier by the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford)—has been in contrast in recent weeks to a stream of the most ridiculous misinformation and scaremongering promulgated through certain sections of the popular press. It is sad, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I have to inform you and the House that I am told by the Valuation Office Agency that those stories have given rise to serious concerns amongst agency staff. They are worried that, in going about their legal business and carrying out the duties given to them by the House—and by the Opposition when they were in power and introduced the Local Government Finance Act 1992—they may face verbal, and at worst physical, attack by members of the public. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the circumstances, those members of the public have themselves been fired up and worried by ridiculous stories about allegations of snooping and invasion of privacy.