Local Government Finance

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Scandalously, council tax now equates to 7% of the income of a low-income family, compared with just 1% for a higher income family. That is unfair. Some people say that we can merely reform the council tax by adding extra bands to the end. Let me tell my hon. Friend—I imagine his area is very similar to mine—that we can add as many extra bands on the end as we like, but it will not raise a single penny more for my council because we do not have houses that would fall into those bands.