Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill. I welcome him to the Dispatch Box in place of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. We express our sympathy and hope that our condolences will be passed to her. The Bill is small but we still receive it with some trepidation. It is quite deceptively small but it is, despite what the Minister said, significant and important. I say at the outset that we do not object to revaluation being postponed; in fact, we welcome it; and, indeed, we would be much happier if the whole thing was abandoned. We recognise the sense in waiting for Sir Michael Lyons to have his enhanced review put forward and to seeing the results of that without his being hampered by the revaluation which is taking place. The Minister has explained the intentions behind the Bill and that it is essentially a cluster of amendments to other previous pieces of legislation: first, the Local Government Finance Act 1992; and, secondly, the Local Government Act 2003, which we all have fond memories of and which we debated for some time in this House. The Bill will cancel the obligation to compile a revaluation list by 1 April 2007 and separate the treatment of Wales and England. The Minister has gone into some depth on myths and mythology. One problem that has occurred is the distress caused in Wales by the revaluation that has taken place. The way that has been handled and how it has been received is not a great arbiter of hopefulness for the future. The revaluation process in England, if and when it ever gets under way again, will no doubt have some of the same connotations. We note that the Bill empowers the Secretary of State to determine the date of any revaluation, should it take place, then leaves in his hands any future revaluations, and presumably the timescale between one revaluation and another. I also note the Minister saying two or three times that any further legislation on revaluation will be taken on the Floor of the House in the other place. Do I assume that this will be by affirmative order which is applicable only to the other place? If that is the situation, then we will push hard to ensure that an order comes to this House and receives our scrutiny at the same time. We have considerable doubts about the fact that decisions on revaluation should be taken by the Secretary of State himself. It must certainly have the support of both Houses of Parliament and full discussion—full and proper scrutiny. I give notice of the fact that we will be testing that at a later stage. The Minister underlined what his right honourable friend in the other place, Mr Miliband, has said, that it is extremely unlikely that there will be any revaluation before the next election. May we hope that with a different, future government, we will have no revaluation following that? The myths and mythology that the Minister describes have arisen from a number of sources. There is no doubt that the postponement of revaluation has now raised an enormous number of hares. The reasons behind the revaluation are for Sir Michael Lyons to look into further. The whole question of local government finance, how it is applied and where it comes from has raised the question in people’s minds, ““What else, other than revaluation?”” There has been a lot of talk about an increase in council tax banding, and the implications that would have in conjunction with revaluation. It is therefore not surprising that concerns have been raised as to what that would mean to people. If there were an increased number of bands, on a higher valuation, it would take council tax way beyond what was ever envisaged for it at its outset. Council tax was always meant to be partly a charge on property and partly a charge on one or two individuals who live in that property. As I understand it, it was never meant to be a serious, major taxation on households, but that is what is beginning to appear as a possibility. As Sir Michael Lyons continues his review, I hope he will take into account the fears being raised among householders about what will happen if their property is re-banded and re-valued in line with market valuations, as the Minister has said. There is also the question that this Bill brings up, but is not contained in it, of how valuation is done. I welcome the Minister’s comments on that, and the fact that there is no intention to widen the valuation officer’s scope. However, it appears that valuation officers already have rights to enter people’s properties, and that is now being interpreted as something likely to happen on a much wider scale. So one must ask: where has that come from? Why is it being bandied around that that is what will happen? Presumably, press inquiries have elicited the information that that could happen. Whatever happens now, the cat is out of the bag. It is now a major problem of revaluation and what valuation officers are going to do, or going to be able to do. If we are not careful, we will end up with a reaction such as that to window taxes, where people will not make improvements to their properties because they are afraid that the valuation will be increased and that they will consequently find that they are unable to pay the council tax. Revaluation has gone away for the time being and we will have wait to see what happens in future when we read Sir Michael Lyons’s report. I was interested that the Minister spent at least 10 minutes of his speech going through the wonderful things that have been done for local government. I do not think that this is relevant to the Bill, but nor was his introduction entirely relevant to it, but I just remind him that there is still a £2.2 billion black hole in local government finance. The Government are still very much in charge of what local government receives, how much money it has to spend and what it must spend it on. So the whole question of local government finance is very much open to consideration and inquiry concerning how much is there to be spent and who is to provide it. That is bound to raise its head as the Bill proceeds. I look forward to Committee. It is inevitable that we shall have to debate some of the mythology further so that we can give people the reassurance that the Minister has tried to give us this afternoon and ensure that it is made certain to people that they are not at threat from valuation officers, that there will not be a spy in the sky testing their property valuation and that the listing of valuations on IT systems will not link up with other systems so that we end up with the threat that there is over ID cards. So there is much that may or may not be relevant. The Bill has raised a number of hares and we will pursue them and try to shoot them in Committee.