House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Dec 1990

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accountability or about making the system easier. It is about destroying the services provided through local authorities by democratically elected councillors. Councillors all over Britain, regardless of their political persuasion, are finding it impossible to continue to provide services. Millions of people are simply unable to pay the poll tax.

A flat rate head tax is no substitute for a tax that is based on ability to pay. We should provide services based on need and not on the ability to pay for them. That exposes the Government's squalid action. They seek to pursue a tax that they no longer support and no doubt they will attempt further to amend it or scrap it so that they can save face at the next general election. That will not work. People despise the poll tax and will continue to oppose it. They will go on fighting for the services that they need, and that means opposing these additional measures.

6.36 pm

Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : I understood that the advantages of the community charge were the simplicity and clarity which make it easily understood by the public. All our constituents know that the community charge is so much per head. That is clear to our constituents even if it is painful, and is much plainer than the strange concept of poundage on the notional rental value of their homes, which is theoretically calculated on a rental value produced in 1972.

The debate is about the tinkering with the documents of the community charge figures by Lambeth council in particular. Those figures are not easily understood by the general public. The figures concerned are the variables between the precepts and the final cash charge to community charge payers. Those precepts are the precepts of the county council, those of the borough or district council and those of the parish council etc.

The first variable is the safety net, about which there have been many rows. Every community charge payer in the borough of Greenwich is subsidised by the national charge payer to the tune of £212 per head. Southwark's charge payers are subsidised by £160 per head, while in Hammersmith and Fulham the subsidy is £111 per head. Despite that, all three councils are levying a high charge. It is odd that the Government have said that we should subsidise incompetent Labour councils at the expense of competent Conservative councils.

Ms. Mahon : What about Westminster? The hon. Gentleman should tell us about its external grant.

Mr. Arnold : Every community charge payer in Conservative Westminster has this year been paying into the safety net a surcharge of £75. That also applies to the charge payers in Kensington and Chelsea, Wokingham, South Buckinghamshire and Chiltern. All those district council areas, in which the voters are intelligent enough to vote Conservative, have nevertheless been ripped off to subsidise incompetent Labour councils. Even in the Conservative-controlled district of Gravesham, community charge payers are being ripped off to the tune of £15. Councils such as Lambeth are not able to tinker with the safety net, because that has been determined by the Government. Those of us who represent constituencies that have had to contribute to the rip-off this year are delighted to know that next year the imposition will be lifted from our constituents.

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The only other variable with which councils such as Lambeth may tinker is the collection account. That is what we are talking about within the narrow confines of the Bill. Lambeth borough council varied the collection account contributions during the year for political ends. The collection account contribution is not a balancing item for account manipulation by councillors.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) referred to the dancing on the steps of Lambeth town hall when the council achieved its narrow legal victory in the courts. It was a response to political imperatives and not to the fact that the sort of community charge being levied by Labour-controlled Lambeth borough council was far too heavy for the people of Lambeth to bear, especially for those under the most financial pressure, about whom the Labour party likes to talk but for whom it seems never to act. It is on the collection account that the shortfalls in collection are to be seen. What about the charge made on individuals within the component total figure for the collection account? This year, every council in the land has inevitably had to estimate what funds it would have to raise to make up the shortfall arising from late payment or no payment. Next year, when councils come to work out how much should be charged per head to the collection fund, they will be able to do so on the basis of a track record. The various track records are now becoming evident.

The figures of collection by August provide us with a guide to competence. By the end of August, an average of 83 per cent. of the charge payers within good Conservative-collecting authorities had already paid up towards the community charge. In Labour authorities, there was already a disparity, because on average they were collecting from only 74 per cent. of charge payers.

Ms. Primarolo : Will the hon. Gentleman explain why Bath, which is a Conservative council, has achieved a collection rate below 70 per cent.? Is that because it is an incompetent Conservative council?

Mr. Arnold : If the hon. Lady were to examine the figures, she would find that Bath is already well up the table. Underneath it, with lower collection figures, are Labour-controlled councils which are to be counted by the dozen.

A study undertaken by The Guardian found that the worst four collecting authorities were all Labour-controlled. At the end of August, Hackney had collected from only 56 per cent. of its charge payers. In other words, 44 per cent. of charge payers in Hackney had paid nothing. In Liverpool, 42 per cent. had paid nothing. In Lambeth, the very borough with which we are concerned, 40 per cent. had paid nothing. That is not especially surprising, because the council has still not collected the full rates income for the final year of the rating system, as it had not for years previous to that. I believe that the shortfall goes back to the financial year 1984-85. That is the last year for which Labour-controlled Lambeth had completed its accounts.

Ms. Primarolo : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that non-payment rates are more likely to be connected, or connected entirely, with people's ability to pay, and that the areas to which he has referred are those in which there is great social stress and increasing poverty? Surely those

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factors would account for many non-payers, or a large proportion of them. There are many who simply cannot afford the poll tax.

Mr. Arnold : That argument will not wash. The hon. Lady has not mentioned that the community charge rebate covers a greater proportion of payers than did the rate rebate. She will find no correlation between non- payers and poor people. If she examines the curve of effective net amount to pay, she will find that those who are at the bottom of the financial pile are not those most heavily impacted by the community charge.

The hon. Lady referred to the borough of Bath and its collection. At the end of September, 77.1 per cent. of the charge payers of Bath had paid up their community charge. She did not mention, for obvious reasons, that in Bristol, which has an incompetent Labour council, only 65 per cent. had paid up. I wonder whether the hon. Lady has been encouraging her constituents to abide by the law and pay up.

Mr. Wareing : Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that I have paid no poll tax to Westminster city council. He might wonder why I have not. That "efficient" Lady Porter-led Conservative council managed to send out my demand form only last week. Has the hon. Gentleman undertaken any research to ascertain how many councils, such as inefficient Westminster council, which is so busy selling cemeteries, have not got round to sending out demand notices?

Mr. Arnold : As the hon. Gentleman has referred to his own position, perhaps he will tell the House about his arrivals and departures to and from addresses and whether those movements have any bearing on the late arrival of his demand notice.

Mr. Wareing : I have been at the same address for over three years.

Mr. Arnold : I cannot account for the late arrival of the notice. I shall check the level of collection of Westminster city council, which no doubt is very much higher than that which has been achieved by the borough in the constituency which the hon. Gentleman represents.

In Nottingham, 30 per cent. of charge payers has not begun to pay by the end of August. I suppose it is not surprising to find that the collection record of a litany of Labour-controlled cities and boroughs is a low one. Labour councils and Labour Members give little or no encouragement to people to abide by the law and pay the bills for their public services.

Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton) : Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for Ministers to consider in their review of the charge and its administration the fact that non-payment of the charge, which produces a shortfall, should not be passed on to the law-abiding majority to pay the following year, and that possibly the capping mechanism that we are debating should take account of the failure of councils to raise that money? Instead of the law-abiding majority having to pay for the malingerers, spending should be cut to provide for the shortfall.

Mr. Arnold : I think that what the law should provide, for, and what all councils should do, with enthusiasm and energy, is the pursuit of non- payers. There is no doubt that it is immoral for certain people not to pay the community charge and to expect the remainder of the public to foot

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the bill. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of councils have got on with the job of collection. The figures show that over 90 per cent. of charge payers are paying their community charge. That is not dissimilar to the proportion of those who were paying rates at this stage of the financial year.

Some effective Conservative authorities are doing far better than the average. For example, Medina, on the Isle of Wight, has estimated that it has already collected from 96 per cent. of its community charge payers. Poole, in Dorset, claims 93 per cent. I congratulate the Conservative- controlled Gravesham borough council on already achieving a 93 per cent. collection rate. That is well ahead of the average.

The rate of collection and the effect on the collection account will be reflected in the contribution that is levied next year by the collecting authorities. Then the chickens will come home to roost. Labour councils have been the most inefficient and the least co-operative and, as always, they pass on the bill to their charge payers. It will be interesting to compare the charge levied next year by high-charging Labour councils and that levied by low-charging Conservative councils.

Mr. Bob Dunn (Dartford) : Does my hon. Friend accept that the blame should be attached not only to Labour-controlled councils, but to those misguided individuals who have led non-payment campaigns, such as that in Swanscombe in my constituency? Such people need taking to task for bombarding innocent people and persuading them not to pay the tax, in pursuit of some misguided fiscal notion.

Mr. Arnold : My hon. Friend has cases in his constituency, as I have in Gravesham borough, of people not paying their community charge. One Labour councillor in Gravesham is not paying her community charge and is therefore passing on the cost of local services to her neighbours, whether or not they are poorer than she is. There is a deafening silence from the Labour group on the council, which says that it is nothing to do with them, as there is a deafening silence from the Opposition Front Bench.

Charge capping is sadly necessary because of such actions. It protects residents from Labour councils' irresponsible control of finance. People want that protection. Last April, Gallup conducted a poll to determine whether people wanted charge capping. It is interesting to note that 53 per cent. of the public want a limit on the extravagant spending of local authorities. It is a salutary comment upon the Labour party that 43 per cent. of Labour voters want charge capping. It is obvious that the Opposition Front Bench is out of touch with Labour voters.

All voters, including Labour voters, are right to fear the possibilities. The rip-offs are evident. I shall cite the original announced intentions of Labour councils before their charge payers were saved by capping. Were it not for the generosity of the Government's safety net, people in the London borough of Greenwich this year would be paying £620. In fact, other charge payers are subsidising Greenwich residents to the tune of no less than £212 per head. Greenwich has a traditionally wasteful Labour council.

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Lambeth, which we are discussing today, has a real rip-off of £575, not the original £548 that it tried to levy on local people. Haringey's rate is £573. Southwark would have had to charge £550, were it not for a subsidy of £160. Hammersmith and Fulham would have levied a charge of £535, but for the safety net contribution of £111. I could go on and on. The only consistent link between those authorities is their tradition of Labour dominance.

If we want to contrast the behaviour of Conservative and Labour councils, we have only to wander through the shire counties. In Avon, Bristol's real charge is £513. The other councils, invariably Conservative, average £400. In Cambridgeshire, Labour-controlled Cambridge council charges £376 and Labour-controlled Peterborough £345. The Conservative- controlled districts in the county have an average charge of £280. In Essex, Labour-controlled Basildon scores £440 and Labour-controlled Harlow £420. The largely Conservative remainder score in the low three hundreds.

In Hertfordshire, Labour-controlled Stevenage grabs £410 and Labour- controlled Welwyn and Hatfield £396. The remainder charge £330. Labour-controlled Leicester charges £429, while the remainder of the county districts charge £340. Labour-controlled Norwich charges £365, while the remainder of Norfolk charges about £300. Labour- controlled Crawley charges £332. Liberal-controlled Adur also charges £332, but the Liberals are not worried about the people of Adur--no Liberal Democrat spokesman has turned up for this debate. The remainder of the West Sussex districts charge about £270. In Greater London, Westminster's real community charge is not the laudable £195 that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) has not got around to paying ; it is actually only £120 without the maximum safety net levy of £75. The London borough of Croydon sets a real rate of £225 without its safety net contribution. Those are Conservative councils in action, charging a low community charge and giving better value to their charge payers. In the metropolitan boroughs--sadly, almost entirely controlled by Labour--the lowest real community charge levy is by Conservative-controlled Trafford at £268.

Charge capping has saved people real money. In Hammersmith and Fulham, the Government have saved every charge payer £99 this year. In Southwark, the figure is £86 ; in Greenwich, £65 ; in Barnsley, £59 ; and in Derbyshire, £56. That affects real people. They must reflect upon the fact that their Labour councils hammered them regardless, but that this Conservative Government have saved them from such irresponsible charging.

Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton) : I am interested in the comparisons that the hon. Gentleman is drawing. Perhaps he would comment on his Department's suggested average charge for the coming year of £380, compared with £278 this year. How does he justify that 33er cent. increase for every poll tax payer in the country?

Mr. Arnold : The figure is based on the standard spending assessment suggested by the Government. It is for councils to decide whether they need to spend up to that assessment. Neither my county nor my borough expects to be banging on that limit.

Inherent in what the hon. Gentleman is saying is the fact that Labour councils cannot save money. Let us consider the facts and the track record of Labour councils.

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We need go no further than the London borough of Brent, and I need only quote the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). In August, he wrote in New Socialist :

"If you have a council that is as monumentally incompetent as Brent's been in the last few years, it rightly gets a major role of censure from the public."

For once, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The people of Brent threw out the Labour council last May. The incoming

Conservative/Liberal Democrat administration had to ask an audit team to investigate how, under a Labour-controlled authority, £4 million of books had disappeared from the borough's libraries during the previous four years. Books had been disappearing at a rate of almost 2,000 a week, with a loss to each Brent charge payer of almost £21.

Mr. Holt : As a former member of Brent council, I remind my hon. Friend that Brent town hall used to be the town hall in Wembley. It was built in 1938 and had been fully paid for by the time Brent came into being. It was then sold and leased back to the Labour administration so that it would have more money to spend on its wildcat schemes. The community charge payers of Brent would have been much better off if there had never been a Labour administration.

Mr. Arnold : My hon. Friend is right. That kind of financial jiggery -pokery was repeated time and again by Labour councils throughout the country, who had the funny idea that they could spend today and somehow be looked after tomorrow--presumably by an incoming Labour Government. It is clear that there will be no Labour Government, and those chickens are coming home to roost for the charge payers in the boroughs concerned. They certainly do not like what they see.

Camden council spent £70,000 per year on a lesbian day centre, and Labour-controlled Derbyshire county council held a party to celebrate Nelson Mandela's birthday at a cost to local charge payers of £2,000. Derbyshire also spends more than £1 million on its information services and local newspaper, £600,000 on its equal opportunities and race relations unit, and £111,000 on giving councillors free trips abroad to sponsor twinning agreements.

Mrs. Edwina Currie (Derbyshire, South) : Is my hon. Friend also aware that, of the total staff employed by Derbyshire education authority, fewer than half are teachers? Most of the money is spent on administration, advisers, and all the rest of the paraphernalia with which the county council seems to think education should be surrounded.

Mr. Arnold : That speaks for itself. Not only is Derbyshire levying a high community charge, but, as my hon. Friend has clearly shown, charge payers are not getting value for even that vast amount of money, because most of the budget goes on the administration of which Socialists are so fond.

The squeamish might not like to hear that Labour-controlled Islington borough council is offering free condoms to residents who are going abroad on holiday.

Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The council is not operating that scheme. It has been withdrawn.

Mrs. Currie : Withdrawn? Is the hon. Gentleman sure?

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Mr. Blunkett : Yes, I am sure. I made a point of checking-- [Laughter.] Perhaps I should rephrase that. Condoms are no longer being made available, and when they were, that was done under the health education programme, with Islington struggling to retain staff, and finding that very difficult under poll tax capping. Nevertheless, it was provided with Government money to employ nine people to work on that particular function.

Mr. Arnold : It seems that, until such matters are exposed--if that is the right word--Labour councils just blunder on. Apparently it never occurred to that Labour authority that people able to afford a holiday overseas would also be able to afford their own condoms. How many people are aware that Labour-controlled Southwark council has been spending £100,000 a year of charge payers' money on a trade union support unit- -whatever that might do? How many people are aware also that Southwark's lesbian and gay unit, in partnership with Labour-controlled Lewisham council, held a leadership, gay consultation and cultural evening with a buffet, cabaret and disco? That is the kind of event on which Labour likes to spend money--and then it sends the public the bill.

The community charge has become a matter of controversy in recent days, but it has highlighted council spending and competence. It could be argued that the community charge is working because it allows the public to see what their councils are up to, and to respond accordingly. Last May, the electorate chucked out incompetent councils such as Brent, which was roundly condemned by the hon. Member for Brent, East. Labour councils were also chucked out at Ealing, and at Hillingdon.

It is a pity that capping is necessary, but the Bill will close a loophole that has possibly made that device somewhat ineffective. 7.4 pm

Mr. John Fraser (Norwood) : Perhaps it is appropriate that I should follow the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), because, although we are not witnessing the burial of the poll tax today, we are seeing the beginning of the funeral procession, as some of the remarks about my own borough of Lambeth have illustrated.

One or two hon. Members said that Labour councillors were dancing on the steps of Lambeth town hall when the courts upheld a poll tax of £522 against a Government figure of £493. That shows why the poll tax has failed, and the Bill is a measure of its failure. Every Government of every political complexion of the past 20 years has been concerned about local government expenditure. I know that that is true from the time when I was a Minister. The present Government took the matter somewhat more seriously, because this is the 50th or 51st piece of local government finance legislation that they have introduced since taking office. The Government have been at pains time and again to limit by statute the amount that councils can raise by rates or, now, by the poll tax.

The Government have grown tired of rate capping because it involves detailed interference in local authority planning. The only good thing that can be said for the poll tax is that it brought the Government to the conclusion that such decisions should be taken not by central Government but by the electorate. The purpose of the poll tax was to allow electors to choose. Incidentally, I do not

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believe that there is any political mileage in knocking on doors in my constituency and saying, "I think that the poll tax should be much higher than it is." I have enough experience and political sense not to do that--and I saw what happened to those of my political friends who did, such as Eric Deakins in Walthamstow. One does not go around arguing for much higher poll tax.

The Government reached the conclusion that control of local government expenditure ought to rest not with central Government but with the electorate, which was the thinking behind the Local Government Finance Act 1988.

Before the people of Lambeth voted in May's council elections, they knew what the poll tax would be. The figure decided upon by Lambeth council was £548, and that forecast by the Government in a written answer two years ago was £547, so the council was only £1 out. In constituencies such as Streatham, there was a Labour swing of 10 per cent., and Labour also captured council seats in my constituency. I do not say that that pattern was repeated throughout London, but the electorate were happy to make their decision from one borough to another. The sign of failure is that the Government were not prepared to stand by the electorate's judgment. Lambeth is a case in point. The people knew what the level of poll tax would be, yet the Government chose to interfere with that democratic choice. Earlier this year, the former Secretary of State for the Environment said that he intended to limit Lambeth borough council's budget, and I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he was sure that limiting the council's level of expenditure was the same thing as limiting its poll tax. My legal advice was that the two were not the same, and it transpires that I was right and that the then Secretary of State was wrong.

I believe that I know why he was wrong. I think that, when the Government drafted the poll tax legislation, they did not intend to introduce capping. If I remember rightly, capping was imposed at quite a late stage during the passage of the legislation. It was an afterthought because the then Government believed that it was not necessary and that the electorate would take the appropriate action. Quite apart from the basic inequity of the tax, the fact that that strategy has failed shows that the Bill is part of the Act's burial, because the automaticity of control of local government expenditure by the electorate, rather than by Government, failed.

Earlier in the debate, the problems of Lambeth and its failure to collect the rates were mentioned. I do not excuse that failure. People come to me with rate demands which in some cases go back seven or eight years. Sometimes they make many visits to the local rates office and they end up with a rates bill which varies from £2,000, in my mother's case--she has been to the rates office about 20 times--to £7,000. I do not excuse that sort of inefficiency. It causes me a lot of worry when people receive bills which go back such a long time. Some local authorities had low levels of rate collection in the past and have a low level of poll tax collection at present. We need to ask ourselves why the collection levels are so low and why some boroughs meet such difficulties. There are a number of reasons which I think that the Government have not fully understood.

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I represent the second most deprived borough in the country. Poverty stalks many parts of the borough, so there is bound to be a low poll tax payment because people simply cannot afford to pay. Old-age pensioners and people on income support have to find £12 a month to pay their water rates, never mind the amount that they have to find for poll tax. Until the Government changed the housing benefit rules by introducing capital disqualifications, almost half the population in my borough--including many owner-occupiers--received housing benefits. On many council estates almost a quarter of all tenants were in receipt of income support.

Therefore, the borough has a huge level of poverty and dependency upon state benefits--income support, housing benefit and the like. If we add to that the great mobility in such boroughs, we get some idea of the problem. A good exercise is to compare the electoral register from one year to another as it gives some idea of how many people move in and out of the borough in that time. In my constituency between 16 per cent. and 20 per cent. of the population change, and the percentage is probably higher in other parts of the borough. We have a combination of a high level of poverty and great mobility. That is why it is so difficult to work out housing benefit. Added to that, the Government are constantly changing the housing benefit rules. It becomes almost impossible to keep up with rate rebate, housing benefit, and poll tax rebate calculations due to that combination of poverty and mobility. That is why the collection level is so low, although I agree that it is not the only reason. Therefore, the local authority quite reasonably assumed that it ought to calculate for a lower level of collection than had previously been anticipated, and that assumption was confirmed by the courts. It was not an unreasonable decision --no one could have foreseen the rate of collection in Lambeth, Bath or anywhere else. The result of the Bill will be that the reduction in budget will be translated into a reduction in poll tax. Incidentally, I do not have any difficulty in understanding a simple arithmetical equation. I would have hoped that the hon. Member who aspires to be the leader of the Liberal party would not have so much difficulty with algebra. The arithmetic is simply stated in the Bill, and I have no objection to the algebraic formula.

In real life, the problem is that, if the Government translate the budget reduction into a poll tax reduction, and there continues to be a low level of collection, the consequence will be a double cut in local services. There will be one cut because the budget is depressed and a subsequent cut because the collection level will decrease and services will not be supported.

Do not let anyone be deceived that services have not been cut, and that such cuts are not causing great problems in our boroughs. In my borough, as in many others, swimming pools are closed every morning at a time when they should be used by schools and unemployed people because it is simply not possible to keep them open. Almost all the voluntary organisations are facing across-the-board cuts because of capping. Other essential services are also being cut, and it does not merely apply to Lambeth--exactly the same is happening in Wandsworth, without poll tax capping.

Wandsworth has a form of poll tax capping because it is under pressure to keep the poll tax down, in exactly the same way as Lambeth is statutorily bound to do so. The

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same thing is happening in Wandsworth-- voluntary organisations are being penalised, care schemes for children have been cut, free law centres have been closed, and a whole range of services, which have been supported by the Conservative council for many years, have been reduced.

The consequence of the Bill will be two kinds of cuts--one caused by the reduction in budget, and the second by a low level of collection of the tax, which in turn flows from the poverty created by the Government. In my borough, unemployment is now three times as high as it was when the Government took office in 1979.

Today, we are witnessing the beginning of the funeral procession for the tax. It is true that the undertaker was unable to speak today--he had to send his assistant along. However, by the time we debate the subject on Wednesday, I hope that, if we cannot see the funeral procession, at least the burial will be in sight.

7.16 pm

Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo (Nottingham, South) : The Bill gives further legislative basis for limiting local authority spending and therefore puts a mechanism in place to protect those whom I know are officially called charge payers, although I am quite happy to call them poll tax payers. The House has a duty to protect our constituents, and the Bill does so.

Given what happened in the city of Nottingham and the county of Nottinghamshire upon imposition of the first year's tax, I have no hesitation in supporting the Bill. The chairmen of the city finance committee and of the county finance committee wrapped themselves in the proverbial cold towels to try to see how high they could set spending without breaching what they estimated to be the ceiling or the cap that the Secretary of State would impose once he had seen the figures that they set for their first poll tax levy. I know that is more than a mere rumour, and I am happy to try to protect my constituents until such time as the issue can be reviewed, and we can put it properly on track.

The principle that central Government have a duty and a proper responsibility to control the totality of public spending is not in dispute. Opposition Members keep crying that we are interfering with local government spending. They seem somehow to ignore the fact that local government spending is a part of public spending, and, it is right and proper that the House should have a say in it.

I think that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman)--in what capacity I cannot recall--years ago made a major speech and made it very clear that the House had that responsibility. The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser), who said that he was a Minister at the time, will agree that, when the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) was Secretary of State for the Environment, he operated a voluntary system of constraint. In those days, most local authorities--certainly Nottingham city council--were Conservative-controlled.

I was one of Nottingham's councillors, and, given the financial mess into which the Labour Government had got themselves, that move seemed perfectly right and proper. The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney-- using, I believe, the usual method of issuing circulars--sought to rein in spending in the middle of the year, and we were all asked to exercise constraint. At the end of the year, largely owing to the co-operation of Conservative

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councils throughout the country, the Labour Government managed to recover some £1,000 million. Given that all this happened 13 years ago, I think that the House will agree that that was a very large sum to recover by means of a voluntary clawback.

The sad fact is that--as the hon. Member for Norwood pointed out--the present Government did not receive the same voluntary co-operation from local authorities. That is why they had to embark on a legislative scheme to limit authorities' spending. I believe that it is largely the conduct of Labour authorities that has brought about this sad but necessary process ; I am only sorry that we did not impose a tough spending limit in year one. I am not sure, even now, that the cap is tight enough to protect many of our long-suffering constituents.

Many hon. Members have been in politics for a long time, either in the House or in local government. I do not recall a single occasion on which an opportunity has arisen to raise extra money on the quiet--because of, for instance, a boundary change or a

revaluation--when local authorities have not used their opposition to change to jack up their charges on local people. I confess that has been done on both sides of the political fence : every local politician, regardless of his political colour, has his pet projects. Following a revaluation, we knew exactly what would happen. It used to be an extra couple of coppers ; now money is no object. We knew from experience that this changeover would mean people being crippled by additional charges. I am sorry that my senior colleagues did not see the obvious at the time, but that is all water under the bridge ; we are now trying to address the current problem. I know that I am oversimplifying matters, and I acknowledge the force of all the arguments about reserves, balances and so forth. Nevertheless, I think that I am right in saying that, if local authorities had been told last year, "You may spend everything that you spent last year, plus the rate of inflation"--which would have protected every teacher, every nursery nurse and every other worthwhile social provision--£2,500 million less would have been levied on our taxpayers in April. Limits on spending all over the country would have prevented that excessive spending.

The Opposition tell us that we should not limit local authority expenditure. I believe that the sum that I have mentioned works out at about £70 for each adult in the country. I can tell the House that my constituents would have been delighted to pay £70 less than they did. Some form of capping must be imposed this year to stop a repetition of that, and to protect our constituents from the consequences of the gay abandon with which local authorities have been spending other people's money.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that last year's community charge in Nottinghamshire could have been £290, perhaps £300, but it was set at £390. Within two weeks, 10,000 people in the city of Nottingham had signed a petition welcoming the possibility of the then Secretary of State's imposing a cap on the city and the country.

Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield) : The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that Nottingham should reduce its poll tax charge. He must be aware that Nottinghamshire county council is wrestling with itself to save 12 elderly people's homes from closure. What does he expect Nottinghamshire people to go without to keep those homes open?

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Mr. Brandon-Bravo : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing the county council's disgusting conduct to the attention of the House. I am glad that he has brought it up, because, if he had not, I should have done so myself. I think that the council's conduct is just about the most disgraceful act by a local authority of which I have ever heard.

The hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) knows very well that, since his party has been in charge in Nottinghamshire, some 5,000 more employees have been put on the payroll. The council cannot introduce that volume of staffing and then say that it cannot afford to keep old people's homes open.

Labour Members are right in saying that, as a result of the £390 charge, seven out of 10 of my constituents are worse off. If, however, the charge had been £290 or £300--as any reasonable person who examines the books will know that it could have been--seven out of 10 families in my constituency would have gained. I do not wish to use the "gainers and losers" argument in relation to the Bill ; suffice it to say that, as the hon. Member for Ashfield knows very well--he has read it in our local press, and heard the chairman of finance speaking on the radio-- his council set a charge that included, over and above its previous year's expenditure, an additional spending programme of £104 million, spread over four years. It is interesting to note that that period is the same as the lifetime of the Labour authority. The additional spending was to be "front-loaded" into the first couple of years, which meant an extra charge of £147 for every adult in the city and county of Nottingham.

The old people's home in my constituency was not opened only last year ; it has been there for 30 years. It is a super place. It is well run and the people love it : it is part of the community. It must have been part of Labour's budget before the extra £104 million was stuck on. The money is clearly there, but Labour has different priorities. Labour says, "To hell with the old people." We have seen the same thing time and again. This side of the House is often accused of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing, but at least we on Conservative Benches do not play jiggery-pokery with the lives of our elderly people. Opposition Members do not give a damn. If the Opposition can make their point, that is the way they will play it.

We have to protect innocent people in our constituencies who are affected by unreasonably high poll tax charges. I wanted accountability ; I wanted the voters in my constituency to know that the bill that came through their door was something for them to decide. However efficient or inefficient the city of Nottingham may be, the problem is that more than 80 per of the bill that comes through the door is set by Nottingham county council. The sooner the city of Nottingham runs its own affairs, separate from the county, hallelujah--the better it will be.

I said earlier that I am concerned about whether the Bill goes far enough. My fears arises partly out of the experience in Lambeth. Lambeth council argued that it was entitled to take a different view of the information that was in front of it when it set the budget. When the Government said that they wanted to cap Lambeth, the council said that it wanted to look again at its information. We allowed Lambeth to take, as it put it, a different view.

Having done that, the council argued that it did not have to pass on the full benefit of budget reductions to its poll tax payers. The point has already been made, but it is

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worth making again, that, if central Government give local authorities more money, which they spend on other projects, the poor old poll tax payer is landed with the same bill. It is just more spending that results in no benefit to the community charge payer. What also worries me is the problem caused by those who will not pay. I have no doubt that there are many people who cannot pay. We shall want to look at their cases carefully. I have much sympathy for those who, for a variety of reasons, find themselves in circumstances for which they could not have been expected to budget. I refer to the budgeting of two people ; I do not refer to the three, four or five-person households. That is a separate argument. If there are five wage earners in a house, they should all pay. The ordinary two-person household that finds itself with a bill that it could not have anticipated falls into the category of those who cannot at this stage find the full amount. However, I have no sympathy whatever for the "won't pay" brigade.

To illustrate my point, like most of my hon. Friends I, together with other Conservative party workers, deliver party literature. That is how we try to get our message across to our constituents. When I visited one of the council estates in my constituency--it is the second largest in the United Kingdom--I stopped some distance away from a beautiful house. It was clear that the owners had bought it under the right-to-buy legislation. It was a corner house, so it stood the maximum chance of enhancement. There was a beautiful wrought-iron gate in the run-up to the front door, another beautiful double wrought-iron gate had been provided for the garage, the house had been excellently rendered and there was delightful stone edging down the side of the drive. I stood back and thought, "Smashing."

Mrs. Currie : And my hon. Friend thought, "I'll get a nice big contribution here."

Mr. Brandon-Bravo : My hon. Friend does not know how wrong she is. I thought that they had done a magnificent job on the house. I am neither a surveyor nor an architect, but I know that the average family on that estate spend £5,000 on their house when they purchase it. I thought to myself, "I bet these people didn't get much change out of £10,000." However, as I walked down the path to deliver my literature I saw in the window a "won't pay" sticker. It illustrated beyond argument that there is a substantial number of "won't payers". No hon. Member should sympathise with the "won't payers". There is a big difference between those who will not pay and those who cannot pay.

Mr. Dennis Turner (Wolverhampton, South-East) : Just because the hon. Gentleman saw that the people who lived in that house had put a "won't pay" sticker in the window, why does he draw the conclusion that that family can afford to pay the poll tax? The hon. Gentleman said that those council house tenants must have purchased their home and spent money on it. They may, however, have fallen on hard times and found it difficult to make their poll tax payments. Why is the hon. Gentleman so patronising about people who live in council houses on council house estates?

Mr. Brandon-Bravo : I am not being patronising.

Mr. Turner : Yes, the hon. Gentleman is being patronising.

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Mr. Brandon-Bravo : No, I am not. I am proud to say that 5,000 of the 9,000 properties on that estate have been bought. I say, "Well done," to those home owners ; I am delighted. I hope and pray that in due time the remaining 4,000 council house tenants will have the same chance to buy their homes. Even those who rent their homes have full security of tenure as a result of this Government's legislation. Many council house tenants look after their homes as if they were their own. Sometimes one cannot tell the difference between the two. I am delighted for them all. It is first-class.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) asks how it is that I know that someone who lives in a very nice house can afford to pay the poll tax. Is that right?

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