Local Government Finance

We have proposed cuts to national income tax as compensation, so there would be a much clearer relationship between what people pay for local services and what they receive. As I said, we need to move away from capping and ring-fencing, and we need a simpler grant mechanism, so that people can understand its relationship to the services that they receive. Surely that is in the spirit of the central-local concordat: indeed, that is what it was designed to achieve. If the Government do not make those changes to local government finance, they will reveal their true colours. They are not committed to devolved decision making, because they are not putting their money where their mouth is. The Minister who introduced last year's debate said that council tax was not broken. Does the Minister of State accept that this year's settlement pushes it further towards the point of no return, if it has not reached it already? Surely it is time the Government faced up to that reality.