Local Government Finance Bill

I support the amendments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), and I also agree with what he said. Amendment 85 stands in my name and seeks to achieve similar ends to my right hon. Friend's amendment 79 and consequent amendments. My amendment seeks to localise council tax on the basis that local authorities will have the same amount of money in 2013 as in 2012-13, so that we have a consistent base from which to develop and implement the new scheme. I am in favour of localising council benefits and of not incorporating the reduction scheme into the universal credit scheme. I know that there are differences of view on that even within parties, but linking council tax benefits with the term ““benefit”” has discouraged many people from applying for something to which they are entitled. In the previous Parliament, the Select Committee conducted an inquiry into the council tax benefit system and suggested that it should, perhaps, be renamed precisely because the word ““benefit”” discouraged some people—especially those who applied for nothing else and who were not entitled to anything else—from applying for it. After all, it has one of the lowest take-ups of any benefit, particularly among pensioners. Often, they are forgoing merely £2, £3 or £4 a week, but that can be a relatively important sum for people on relatively low incomes. As I have said, I support the introduction of this reduction scheme and its both being clearly outside universal credit and being linked to council tax in such a way that people pay a reduced amount of that tax. I should point out that earlier today the Minister defended the imposition of an unwanted referendum for local mayors in Sheffield by his Lib Dem colleagues on the city's council, yet he will now extol the benefits of council tax. That is a somewhat different position from the one he would have adopted only a few months ago. Although there is general support for the Government's proposed change, there is also a problem. If one of the aspirations of renaming the council tax benefit as the council tax reduction is to encourage more people to take it up, the consequences for local government are clear. Previously if councillors had gone out on a publicity drive to improve the take-up of what is currently known as this benefit, central Government would have paid for that. Furthermore, if more people take up the benefit—or reduction—there is a cost in that that also fully falls on local authorities. That is a perverse impact of the Government's proposal.