House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jul 1990

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children, the needs are higher again. The needs of a couple are fully assessed within the system. The provision of joint and several liability is there to ensure that where one of the partners is not earning, the debt can be recovered from the earning partner, who has liability for the couple as a whole.

Mr. Harry Greenway : Will my hon. Friend assure the community charge payers of Ealing that, with all of us, he will strenuously resist the reintroduction of rates, remembering that in 1987 the Labour-controlled Ealing council introduced a rates rise of 65 per cent? Some pensioners nearly starved as a result, but Labour Members do not care.

Mr. Portillo : It was remarkable that throughout our recent two-day debate on charge capping, not one Labour Member once talked about the hardship for community charge payers of the high community charge bills being put out by Labour-controlled authorities. My hon. Friend has that concern for his constituents. I only wish that it was shared on the other side of the House.

Mr. O'Brien : Is the Minister aware, or may I remind him, that millions of women stay at home to look after a family consisting of children or elderly relatives and thus do not earn any money or have any income or their own? Those women did not pay rates under the previous system, as the Minister pointed out. Is there any valid reason why they should not receive transitional relief, as they qualify in every way for it? Can the Minister explain why they do not qualify? When will he do away with the unfair and iniquitous provision of joint and several liability?

Mr. Portillo : We believe in treating couples as couples. A couple may decide that one of the partners will not earn and that the partner who earns will bear the responsibilities of the entire family. That decision is made by couples. If the amount that the partner who is earning receives is so little that the couple qualifies for relief, they will be assessed as a couple and their needs taken into account. As I have explained, if a couple has children, is elderly or disabled, the assessment of their needs will be higher. That is appropriate. The provision of joint and several liability exists to protect the non-earning partner.

Mr. David Nicholson : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for explaining the position so clearly in reply to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie). Will my hon. Friend do all that he can to bring home to the public the fact that the onus for paying the community charge within a couple where one partner has no income must rest on the partner with income?

Mr. Portillo : My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have joint and several liability to emphasise the fact that, although under the benefit system we treat couples as couples, we recognise that two people who each receive a personal community charge bill, when one is earning but the other is not, should have joint and several liability so that liability can be recovered from the earning partner if required.

Charge-capped Authorities

17. Mr. Flannery : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has carried out any assessment of the costs to those local authorities which have been

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charge-capped and have had to issue new community charge bills to each charge payer ; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Chris Patten : As I made clear in my statement on 3 April 1990 about community charge in England, we estimate that the costs will be about £200,000 per charging authority. I took account of that when I decided the authorities' caps.

Mr. Flannery : Is not it a fact that the Secretary of State, in whatever statements he has made, has never confessed that the Government are in total chaos about the poll tax and wish to God that they had never thought of it? Is not that the reality? If vast numbers of people are facing the bailiffs, and so on, and the chaos that that will produce, why on earth should local authorities now be having to raise an immense extra amount of money with no help from the Government and wondering what in God's name they are going to do? Is not it time that the Government withdrew the poll tax?

Mr. Patten : The answer to the hon. Gentleman's first, second and fourth questions is no. The answer to the third question is that local authorities should take some account of the consequences of excessive spending, not least for their community charge payers.

Mr. Donald Thompson : Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of my constituents are incensed that the local authority is refusing to remit to them the whole of the charge cap?

Mr. Patten : I recognise what my hon. Friend has said. It is astonishing, first, that some Labour local authorities are wriggling and squirming to avoid passing on budget reductions to their community charge payers and, secondly, that they have used so much of the community charge payers' money to try to ensure that community charge payers have to pay more. That is what the Labour party means by fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Ron Brown : Surely it is understood that the community charge-- [Interruption.] --that the poll tax is clearly unacceptable to people both north and south of the border. If they refuse to pay, is not it a clear indication of people voting with their feet and with their pockets? Does the Secretary of State agree that if hon. Members say that they are not paying, as I do, they are leading by example? That is certainly important in the coming period.

Mr. Patten : Those Labour Members of Parliament and councillors who say that they will not pay the community charge are loading extra costs on to their own constituents. That is the worst sort of freeloading, and it should be deprecated by every hon. Member. I am sure that it is deprecated by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould).

Institution of Civil Engineers

19. Mr. Thurnham : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has received the report on pollution issued by the Institution of Civil Engineers ; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Trippier : The institution sent me a copy of its report, entitled "Pollution and its Containment", which it

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published on 19 July. I welcome the report as a valuable contribution to continuing studies of environmental issues.

Mr. Thurnham : While fully considering the fuel needs of poorer households, will my hon. Friend consider the need for a tax on carbon fuels, as recommended by the Institution of Civil Engineers?

Mr. Trippier : Taxation is entirely for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. With regard to the recommendations in the document to which my hon. Friend referred, particularly in terms of the stabilisation of carbon dioxide levels at present levels by the year 2005, we shall address that matter in the forthcoming White Paper.

Mr. Holt : Will my hon. Friend read the report carefully before he passes comment, unlike the reporter of The Observer newspaper who last Sunday was able to write about the Environment Select Committee's report on beaches before having seen it, allegedly on the basis of a leaked document? Five days later the reporter asked the Clerk to the Committee for a free copy so that she could rewrite what she had written the previous Sunday completely inaccurately.

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Mr. Trippier : I share the disgust of my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished member of the Select Committee on the Environment, about the article that appeared in the Sunday newspapers. It was far from the truth. I welcome the Select Committee's report and the nice things that it said, particularly about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Simon Hughes : Will the Minister concede, either now or later, that the Government's best intentions to do environmentally good things in the White Paper have been shot through by the Treasury refusing to accept any fiscal penalty or advantage? There are to be no green taxes. Does not that undermine the pollution policy that the Government intended to introduce?

Mr. Trippier : The speculation in which the hon. Gentleman indulges is about as wide of the mark as The Observer article on bathing beaches to which my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) referred. Were I to convey to the hon. Gentleman the import of the White Paper, there would be no point in having the document.

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