Local Government Finance Bill

I accept that the straitened financial times make things very difficult, but do I take from what my hon. Friend has said that there is a longer-term aspiration, if not necessarily a fully fledged commitment at this stage, that we should look to allow local authorities to raise the council tax in future to ensure that there is a little more of a balance; that some more of the money that they are expending comes from local residents? I accept that this is not a short-term measure given the financial constraints that we are under, and I understand why the Government have tried to provide such incentives to freeze the council tax at the moment, but in the longer term, the rebalancing to which he refers should ensure that local government has other full sources of income possibly to rely upon.