Council Tax

I simply do not understand why the hon. Gentleman feels that that intervention—eloquent though it was—goes any way towards explaining the evident self-contradiction in the Conservative party's position. Thirteen years ago—we are not talking about the 1980s here—the Conservatives capped the Lincolnshire police authority. When they were sitting on the other side of the House, they did exactly the same thing that they are condemning the current Labour Government for doing. It is encouraging to hear the hon. Gentleman say that times have changed, but I remind him of the simple statistic that between 1991 and 1997, the Conservatives capped 31 authorities. I do not understand how he thinks he can get away with saying that capping is a thing of the past, when the Conservatives used it to gay abandon throughout the time they were in government in the 1990s. Perhaps there are other political reasons why Conservative Members are so keen on condemning capping now, but they need to provide a great deal more evidence before any Member could seriously believe that if the Conservatives were in government they would do anything other than what the present Government are doing. Let me move on to deal with the Liberal Democrat position. I agree with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that the capping regime has passed its sell-by date, but so has council tax. The underlying issue is that we have an unfair system for funding these services. As hon. Members will know, Sir Michael Lyons's review recommended the abolition of capping and said that last-minute decisions were costly to administer, so—