Council Tax 2006–07

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I declare an interest as an elected member of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. In 1997, when this Government came to power, council tax, as introduced by the Conservative administration, had been widely seen as being fair and reasonable and was set at an affordable level across the bands. That can hardly be said now. Since that time, the Government have presided over an increase in council tax of nearly 90 per cent, while raising the level of grant towards it by just 39 per cent, which has been made clear in the Statement. There has been a significant shift between the amount which is now borne by the tax payers and the grant provided by the Government, which is not made up of government revenues alone, but includes a major contribution from the non-domestic rate payers. It is ironic that one of the Government’s own number—Sedgefield—which has a Labour district and county council and a fairly well known Labour MP, now has the dubious honour of having the highest council tax in the country—£1,490 at band D. Wandsworth, which is a good Conservative council and is consistently well managed, despite the insatiable demand of the Mayor for London, has, at £648, the lowest charge, which is less than half that of Sedgefield. The levy for the Mayor amounts to £289 of Wandsworth’s charge, which is within a hair’s breadth of being half of the total amount. Most Londoners would say that the Mayor is proving to be very bad value for that sort of money. He has insatiable ambitions for the future, some of which are shared by the Government. I must ask the Minister whether there will be any limit on the amount of precept that he will be allowed to levy. Others who will be concerned by the 4 to 5 per cent rises this year are pensioners. On average, they are worse off by £250, and that is without the cushion of the Chancellor’s £200 election bung of last year. Could it be that these gifts get handed out only in election years? After that, those who are demonstrably the poorest off under his regime are made worse off. The Chancellor’s contempt for pensioners, whether on state or private pensions, is becoming only too apparent. This omission this year is just one more example of that. It seems that the older one gets, the less the Chancellor thinks one needs to have security of income. Perhaps the Minister could tell us why this ““one year only”” contribution has been dropped. The Minister in the other place also reminded us that there is a council tax element of the funding package for the 2012 Olympic Games, which adds about 0.3 per cent to the council tax average increase of 4.2 per cent. Will the Minister explain what the totality of the Olympic Games’ burden is to the council tax payer, whether it is capped, and for how long it is envisaged that it will last? Will it last beyond 2012? While speaking about averages, the Government insist on issuing figures for average council tax per dwelling. Does the Minister accept that independent commentators, which include the House of Commons Library notes, have denounced that terminology as being inaccurate and unsuitable? They point out that the only fair way to compare council tax, like for like, is to contrast a band D tax with a band D tax. By doing that, it becomes clear that, on average, Conservative councils charge—excluding precepts from fire, police and, where appropriate, the GLA—£81 less a year than Labour councils and £88 less than Liberal Democrat councils. Will the Minister explain why it is that the Government should insist on making comparisons on this dubious basis? Does she not accept that in different local authority areas the mix of dwellings by value may be significantly different, one from another? It is remarkable that 50 per cent of the Statement has been on capping just two hapless councils which have fallen under the Government’s capping procedures. By how much have they breached the limit? How much is that in monetary terms? It seems clear that with the Government’s withdrawal of the revaluation process this year, their commitment to increasing the number of council tax bands and the reviews that are now being undertaken by Sir Michael Lyons and the Miliband team, any lessening of the burden of council tax is improbable. Sadly, property is becoming the milch cow of this Government. It is time that the Government looked to decrease the burden on council tax payers, stopped redistributing grant from one area of the country to the other, lessened the burden on income-restricted pensioners, abandoned their excessive folly of regionalisation and started to put the council tax payer first.