Perhaps, Mr Deputy Speaker, I had better not pursue that. However, it is certainly true that given their drubbing a couple of weeks ago, the Liberal Democrats will have to chase votes wherever they can find them.
Amendment 1 is designed to challenge the Government to concede, and to give a commitment to this House, that should they use their powers under the Bill and make stipulations about the schemes that local authorities will run, they will at least consult local government before doing so.
Amendment 3, which also stands in my name, exemplifies my belief that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich argued, this is a rushed reform that has been introduced without an ear to proper consultation or a thought to the consequences. The amendment attempts to flush out whether the Government have properly considered the impact of the Bill in relation to the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, which allows a local authority, in setting its budget and its council tax, to put to the vote in a referendum a level of council tax that it might want to propose for its area, and allows local residents to veto what they may regard as excessive council tax rises. Under those powers, a local authority must hold a referendum no later than the first Thursday in May of the financial year to which the council tax would relate. In practice, that means that a local authority will have to run contingency spending plans, budgets and council tax levels until the result of the referendum is known, and if it is unsuccessful, those contingency budgets will need to be put in place and new council tax bills issued. That process must take place around the turn of the financial year, and by early May at the latest, yet the Bill requires that the council tax support scheme must be designed and in place by January—before most local authorities finalise and agree their budgets and council tax levels, and certainly before the level in any referendum might be established.
That mismatch indicates that this reform is ill thought out, rushed and likely to be wrong, and it reinforces the arguments that my right hon. Friend made about his amendments 6, 7, 10 and 13, to which my name has been added. There are good reasons for making this part of the benefits system local, but there is no justification for doing it by making harsh cuts to the national and local totals of spend available, by capping the totals against any future rise in needs or costs, by requiring local councils to carry all the risk of any increases in claims, or by forcing very big cuts in council tax support for many of those who need it most.
When we last debated this in Committee in January, my right hon. Friend and I noted that councils were faced with an extraordinarily tight timetable of 12 months until the point at which they would have to have these new schemes in place. That period is now eight months. There is no time to consult local residents, to design the computer software systems necessary to run these schemes or to test them and put them into practice, to work out how the tapers to the new universal credit system will have to work with the council tax support system, or to plan for the new local scheme in the context of next year’s budget planning by local authorities.
This is a disaster waiting to happen. The Government have not done the work needed for local government to do the work that it needs to do. I say this to Ministers: take a leaf out of the Health Secretary’s book, pause, listen, and be prepared to put back the start of this scheme from April next year to April 2014.