Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I declare something of an interest in an historical sense at least, having served in local government in the mid-1990s. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), and I listened carefully to what he said. I was slightly disturbed to hear earlier this afternoon that his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), was not able to be with us as anticipated, because unfortunately she is not very well. The hon. Gentleman may not know that I was the Conservative candidate in Brent, East at the 1997 general election, when I fought against a chap called Mr. Ken Livingstone, who was then a Member of Parliament. I ran him fairly close—just another 16,000 little votes and I would have defeated him. Having some familiarity with the hon. Lady’s constituency, I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would pass on my regards and, I am sure, those of all other hon. Members, and wish her a safe and healthy return to us next week. It is a pleasure to speak shortly after my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), who worked in local government in Essex earlier in her career. Her knowledge of these matters was clearly reflected in the quality of her contribution a few minutes ago. The Bill has just two clauses. It is one of the shortest that I have debated in my time in the House, but it serves an important purpose in that it delays the revaluation of properties for council tax purposes in England. In a briefing note that was produced in October, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors pointed out that the proposed revaluation which was to be undertaken by the Revaluation Office Agency would have represented"““the largest exercise of its kind in the world””." As such, the decision to delay it, which the Bill facilitates, represents one of the first major post-election climbdowns by the Government—although given recent events, I trust that it will by no means be the last. It is a truism that no one likes paying taxes, but the level of council tax, even on the existing valuations, which will run for several more years at least, is one of the major features of my constituency mailbag. That is particularly true in the spring, when council tax demands go out, and in responses from pensioners, many of whom live on relatively fixed incomes and find that their council tax bill is their biggest single monthly outlay, particularly if they have paid off their mortgage. Many people experience considerable difficulty in meeting those bills, so at least they will not face the added burden of a revaluation in the short term. As part of the debate on this Bill has related to the subject and process of billing, I want to make a few brief points on how changes in the billing system have affected public attitudes to the spending of funds by precepting authorities. The breaking-out of components on the overall council tax bill into individual line items, such as policing and fire and civil protection, has, I think, been a positive move on the whole. It certainly tends to concentrate constituents’ minds on how money is actually spent on those particular services, once they are itemised. For instance, when I was first elected to this House back in 2001, I think that some of those items were still effectively subsumed within the overall totals. However, it is interesting to note that now that those have been broken out, constituents have started to ask more specific questions about how such itemised money is being spent. I see that one or two Labour Members are nodding in assent to that proposition. Policing precepts, for example, have generated quite a bit of correspondence from my constituents in the past few years. Indeed, one of the reasons why I am so opposed to the regionalisation of police forces in East Anglia is that Essex has a relatively low police precept compared with other East Anglian forces, so any regional merger would probably lead to a rounding-up of precepts, which could lead to proportionately higher increases in Essex on the policing precept and thus on the overall bottom-line level of council tax. I shall say nothing more about that subject this afternoon for fear of straying out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but suffice to say that people pay enough council tax in Essex as it is, without having to pay an even higher bottom-line figure to prop up unpopular reforms that have little or no public support. I suspect that part of the Government’s rationale behind backing away from short term revaluation has been the howl of protest that followed the change to the formula determining the level of grant paid to local authorities by Her Majesty’s Treasury. Because between two thirds and three quarters of the eventual council tax is determined by that level of grant, however the individual properties within the local authority are banded, any changes to the formula clearly have important implications for the remaining element, which has to be raised directly by the local authority. That then falls across the council tax base, which we now know is not likely to be revalued in the short term. I must challenge the Minister on a point that he raised on Report. Any alteration in the grant formula normally creates winners and losers, and the change, which took place a few years ago, from the standard spending assessment system to the revised formula spending share system certainly did that all right. The Minister contended on Report that there are very few specific examples where that has been a problem. I shall answer his point directly: most of the losers in the transfer of resources that took place in the switch from SSA to FSS were not exclusively, but overwhelmingly local authorities—both county and district councils—concentrated in the south-east of England; most of the gainers, although not exclusively, were urban and metropolitan authorities in the midlands and the north of England. There was effectively an important shift of resources from the south-east to the midlands and the north, which had important knock-on effects on the council tax bills subsequently levied on council tax payers. In the year in which the switch took place, the county council precept in Essex went up by 16 per cent. in one hit, because millions and millions of pounds in grant were removed from Essex and given to Labour’s friends in the midlands and the north.