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Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : There has been only one speech of substance by a Conservative Member this evening, and that was the one delivered by the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Lee). It is a pity that his speech was not the speech of the Secretary of State for the Environment. If it had been, it would have opened up possibilities for the discussions that the right hon. Gentleman has talked about. The hon. Gentleman said that a property tax would be a better form of taxation than the poll tax and he suggested that it should be linked and related to the ability to pay. That would mean that the Labour party's rebate scheme would be attached to the property tax that it proposes.
The hon. Gentleman has advocated the agenda that the Labour party has put forward. He had some ideas on how to handle the short-term emergency problem with which we would be confronted before we abolished the poll tax.
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I do not think that what he suggested would necessarily work smoothly, but at least he offered ideas that could be discussed and considered.Apart from the hon. Member for Pendle, Conservative Members have either defended the poll tax, subject to minor adjustments, or have talked in vague and woolly terms about a review and everything being open for discussion. They have repeated the language of the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State said that he wanted talks. If so, why did he attack the very people with whom he would have them? He is supposed to want talks with the representatives of local government, but his language was the traditional approach of those who supported the introduction of the poll tax all along. He spoke of profligate authorities and claimed that high poll tax charges were the fault of the Labour-controlled local authorities rather than the grant system and the standard spending assessment that the Government have implemented. His language was distorted. He attacked also the Opposition, and not only because of the furore that arose in the Chamber. The attack had been prepared and was in his speech. He said that he was seeking negotiations and then he attacked the very people with whom he wished to negotiate. It was rather like the Americans saying that they wanted to enter into negotiations with Saddam Hussein and claiming that they could force him into accepting negotiations.
The Government have a majority of 100 Members in this place, and there should be discussions and negotiations among Conservative Members before any all-party talks take place. The Government should come forward with ideas. They cannot merely say, "Everything is open and we shall discuss everything." They must say, "These are our ideas. These are the thoughts that we shall throw into the talks. We might be willing to adjust them or alter them, and we may even accept fundamental reform."
How many ideas did the Secretary of State present this afternoon? The answer is none. It seems that he wishes to talk again about the poll tax or to introduce what the Evening Standard describes as a new poll tax because of the problems that have arisen with the public. It seems that the poll tax must be reconsidered, because it has proved to be unpopular. The right hon. Gentleman did not say why he thought that it has proved unpopular and why there are problems with it. He did not suggest why the public have reacted so strongly against it. He seemed to be saying that the opinion polls show that the public are strongly opposed to it, that all the signs are that the public are against it and that we had better reconsider it. What sort of position is that when it comes to negotiations?
What are the basic problems with the poll tax? The major defect is the one that was raised by the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson). He said that there should be no representation without taxation. That is what is wrong with the poll tax. The notion of accountability that accompanies the poll tax is wrong. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick) said that everyone should contribute something towards local services if he or she is to be entitled to a vote.
The very concept that led Conservatives to go forward with the poll tax is the thing that is wrong with it. It means that the entitlement to vote is based upon taxation, and that is not the way to run a democratic society. People should have a birthright to exercise the franchise, and only at a later stage should it be decided what people should
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pay. The franchise would never have been advanced on the basis of poll tax. In the 19th century, the franchise was based on a property qualification, and only certain people were entitled to it. Some people are being excluded. Records show that there is a shortfall of 600,000 on the electoral registers for England, Scotland and Wales. That has not happened in Northern Ireland. What is the difference between Northern Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales? It is that Northern Ireland does not have the poll tax, and its franchise is therefore in a much healthier state. That should worry all hon. Members.During Question Time, the hon. Member for Colne Valley suggested that the franchise should be taken away from those who did not pay their poll tax. He should be ashamed of making such a suggestion in the House. We are all beneficiaries of the democratic process.
Mr. Riddick : Will the hon. Gentleman come clean and tell us the real reason why he opposes the poll tax? He gave an explanation in some rag called "Seven Days" in August 1988. He wrote :
"People paying a high poll tax--especially in inner city areas--will feel punished by having a Labour council. People will then ask : why should I pay so much money so that the council can help drug addicts and fund lesbian and gay activities? Long term, I am doubtful that what is left of local government can remain a useful site for our electoral struggle."
Why does not the hon. Gentleman tell us the real reason why he opposes the poll tax? It is because he knows that the party is over.
Mr. Barnes : If councillors do not want to levy over-high levels of poll tax, they have to cut services. If they want to provide services, they have to charge astronomical levels of poll tax. That is not a choice that Parliament should place upon local councillors, because it is no choice. Whichever they choose, it hammers local people. It is a fix and a fiddle. The hon. Member for Colne Valley must show me the article that he quoted, because I do not recognise it. Perhaps he is not aware of who I am. However, it may be that, having studied it closely, I would not find too much with which to disagree. The main problem with the poll tax is not just that it is a tax per head, but that it has consequences for electoral registers and polling. Another problem is that its level has been pushed up and up by Government actions to cut rate support grant in recent years. It would have been bad enough if there had just been a standard, low-level poll tax to be paid by most people, but it is even worse than that, because Government actions have foisted high levels upon us.
My reason for not paying my poll tax relates to the point that I made about electoral registration. I was elected by the people of my constituency, and a large number of them have been forced off the register. Indeed, 8.5 per cent. of the electorate even in Finchley have disappeared from the register during the past two years. That has led to a distorted electorate. It would have been bad enough if those who have been forced off the registers had been chosen at random, across the political spectrum, but the reality is even worse--people from specific sets of political views are being hammered. They have the most to fear from the continuation of the poll tax, because they have been forced off the franchise and therefore have no opportunity to vote for changes.
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I intend to argue in the courts that the Government have undermined the operation of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and that, de facto, many, many people are being excluded from the franchise. The law must recognise that as undermining the Act. It is disgraceful that a modern-day Government should introduce a measure that undermines the Act. It is the worse form of taxation ever introduced into any western democratic system. That is why people are rebelling against it. No other Government in western Europe or in the developing democracies of eastern Europe--or, indeed, anywhere else in the world--would introduce a poll tax.The only way forward is to state clearly that the poll tax will be abolished. We do not want a new poll tax, a graduated poll tax, or a poll tax with changes here and there. We want an entirely different system, and the easiest way to achieve that is to revert to the rating system. We need to move quickly, and that would allow us to do so. A review that goes on and on, with people discussing different ideas, will only make matters worse. The poll tax must be abolished, and if the Secretary of State can offer some ideas about that, we might then begin a dialogue. Members of the Conservative party, which has a vast majority, should get together and find an alternative to the poll tax.
8.46 pm
Dr. Keith Hampson (Leeds, North-West) : I welcome the return of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to the Front Bench. I know how much he believes in what he called the integrated approach--the structure of local government, the relationship between it and central Government, the relationship of both with the community, together with the financing of local government. Unless we consider all as a whole, we will continue to make grave errors.
I wish to deal with three issues. The first is the aspect of fairness mentioned by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes). My right hon. Friend has stressed many times that he places great weight on the public's perception of a lack of fairness in the community charge. I wrote an article in The Times almost three years ago and received a lot of flak about it. I calculated that well under 20 per cent. of the electorate in my constituency would benefit by more than £50. That calculation was based on a Government poll tax figure of £178 per person. Therein lies one of the problems. Leeds ended up with a poll tax of £345 per person--and, under the current Labour council, we are heading for £400 or more. It does the Government no good to pitch expectations at one level if the reality turns out to be very different. It simply heightens the sense of injustice.
I accept that there is an attractive principle in the poll tax, which is that it is a tax per head : everybody makes some contribution to the cost of local government. Huge costs were involved in creating the registers and if the system is to continue to be used, one suggestion is to apply it in broad bands related to income. I do not envisage any real difficulties, except that a poverty trap would be created at the bottom of the banding. It would not be a problem at the top because doubling the rate for someone moving into the top tax band, which might mean paying an additional £200 a year, would not really be a
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disincentive. But to move from a 20 per cent. rate to a full rate in a rough and ready banding system--there could not be too many bands or it would be a local income tax--would create disincentives. Therefore, there are some difficulties.I never accepted that passing information from the Inland Revenue to local councils was a problem in principle. The poor have to give every bit of information about their earnings in order to claim benefit. But better would be a system of self-assessment whereby people ticked a box saying whether they were a top taxpayer or paid no tax. There could be an ad hoc checking of that system, but, by and large, if such a system were adopted, people could be trusted. An alternative would be to keep the poll tax and relate it broadly--I stress broadly--to property. No revaluation imposes a huge cost and, despite all the best efforts of the experts, it is always pretty rough and ready. People are aggrieved by differentials. They do not see why properties in the same street should have different rateable values. Any revaluation system can be perfect, so why not accept a rough and ready system of broad bands?
In Leeds there are essentially five bands. In band A there would be odd houses such as Harewood house, with rateable values under the old system of more than £2,000. In band B, would be the housing in the suburbs with rateable values of between £400 and £1,000. The next two bands could contain the largest number of properties, those with rateable values under £400 and under £200--band D--and lastly there would be a band containing the smaller older properties, of which there are many in Leeds with rateable values of less than £50. The average rateable value under the old system in Leeds, was £150, so most people would fall into band D. Any subsequent revaluation could be done by a local authority altering the bands, when judged necessary. Each authority could make its own judgment. People would well understand why in one part of a town people were in band B, whereas elsewhere they came in bands D and E. The bands would affect the rate at which one paid the poll tax. That would give a certain perception of fairness.
Whether we move to a property-based system or simply retain a per capita system, the burden falling on individuals at local authority level is too high. When, more than 10 years ago, I was in the Department of the Environment and we looked at all the options, it was obvious to me that, if we were to reform the rating system, the scale of local authority expenditure had to be reduced.
The dominant expenditure falling on local authorities is education. I have always argued that, as education is a national investment, and as there are national standards which it is critical should be provided for our people, central Government should finance education directly and not assume that the whims, prejudices and philosophies of local councils will be the same as those of the Government. Clearly, often they are not. It was only last year that Leeds accepted the technical and vocational education initiative, one of the most important vocational developments. It was almost the last education authority in the land to do so, simply because, for some reason, it thought that it was the tainted priority of a Conservative Government requiring tainted Conservative money.
Let me refer to the excellent pedigree of the scheme put forward by Lord Joseph, as he now is, in 1982 for a 75 per cent. central grant earmarked for education. We could go beyond the first stage--of allowing local authorities to
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disburse it--reinforcing the current direction of Government policy, which is that schools should themselves have a greater say over their budgets and what they want to do. In other words, we are talking not just of the relationship between central and local government but about the relationship generally of services to the community. The cost of schools could be funded directly using the formula that has been established under the local management of schools. The governors and head of a school could then decide how much to spend on teachers as against equipment. Instead of all teachers' salaries being paid from the centre, there would be more devolution of negotiations on teachers' pay and how many teachers should be employed.The Government's intention of the grant maintained status of schools was, according to the circular, to
"leave the balance of support for education between national and local tax payers unchanged."
In other words, although we try to encourage schools to opt out from the local authority system, the local authority still pays. That point is often overlooked. The money is recouped from the local education authorities. That is a wasteful procedure anyway and it does not redirect costs from the local authority to the centre. It lifts no burden from the community charge payer. If we were to move to direct payment from the Treasury to the schools so that the schools, governors and parents could assess priorities themselves, existing policies would be reinforced and that would have important consequences.
An education block grant covering all education in the region of just under 3p would fall on income tax. I do not know where the local government correspondent of The Times got his figure of 10p from. However, it could be done in phases and involve no tax increase. At the same time, we could do something with the police block grant, which is currently 51 per cent. The Metropolitan police grant has just been increased to 52 per cent. There are powers in the police Acts to enable the Secretary of State to change the amount of grant. The police could immediately go up to 75 per cent., which would save another £1 billion to the benefit of the community charge. I would not include the fire service. That is a local, not a national, service. However, police and education are national services which could be moved towards a 75 or 80 per cent. block grant, thereby lifting enough of the community charge to halve it.
A package of different approaches could be put together which would have the effect of lowering the burden on charge payers and it could be phased in. There is no reason to hesitate. It would be possible to use existing powers under the education support grant system, because, with effect from last April, there is no ceiling to the amount that can be channelled directly from the Department of Education and Science to education. One could start the process of transferring education costs to the centre, together with police costs, before next April. If one wanted to do something about the fairness of charges, the old rateable values are still in existence because the water authorities use them. So one could equally do something about broad property banding before next April.
I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State urgently to consider how to move forward in a number of directions, not just as part of the long- term restructuring
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of local government, including provision for elected mayors, of which I approve, but so that a new system can be implemented before next year.8.58 pm
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) : There will be great disappointment among my constituents tonight, because they were looking forward to hearing the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) say that he intended to scrap the poll tax. That is the action that the right hon. Gentleman implied that he would take when he stood for the leadership of the Conservative party. One has the feeling that he was given the post that he now holds as a form of punishment. Seventy-nine per cent. of my constituents are worse off with the poll tax than under the old rating system, which accounts for my advocacy of a return to the old arrangement. It is not only the Secretary of State for the Environment who does not appear to have a clue about what he should do ; the same is true of Tory Members in general. I suspect that there are no members of the No Turning Back group in their places.
Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : The hon. Gentleman is wrong again.
Mr. Martlew : If Government Members do not turn back, they will be heading for political oblivion-- [Interruption.] If any member of the No Turning Back group wants me to give way, I shall be happy to do so.
Mr. Oppenheim : The hon. Gentleman is not worth it.
Mr. Martlew : Immediately the new Prime Minister took office, I wrote to him suggesting that he put a Bill before the House to repeal the community charge--to give it the Conservative title, but really the poll tax, to give its true name--and to reintroduce the old rating system from 1 April 1991. The House would ensure that such legislation had a speedy passage through Parliament. There would be no objections to it from Labour Members, and I am sure that Conservative Members too would agree to it, knowing that the Government had made a mistake.
Instead, we are told that the poll tax might be reformed after the next general election. I warn the electorate not to believe the Conservatives. If they are re-elected, the poll tax would have a very low priority, and it could be towards the end of another Conservative term of office before they decided to change the system. The Prime Minister has kept silent, and the Secretary of State for the Environment asked Labour to help him out of a mess. It reminds me of the old Laurel and Hardy phrase, "This is another fine mess you've gotten us into." We are expected to help out the Conservatives and to save their political skins.
We want a return to the old rating system and a fairer rebate scheme. Conservative Members have long denigrated the old rating system, but problems with it arose only when a Conservative Government decided to reduce rate support grant. The electorate saw rates shooting up but services reducing. That happened because the Tories cut rate support grant and gave the money back in the form of personal tax cuts. It is a myth that people who did not pay rates contributed nothing to local government services. Anyone who pays income tax pays for local government services, and the Government know that to be true. The Tories wanted to be seen to be
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reducing income tax, but blamed local authorities for rate increases. They did that even to the extent of criticising Tory-controlled councils. That did not bother Conservative Members of Parliament.People live in the houses that they can afford because of the tax incentives that they enjoy--in the form of the £30,000 mortgage interest relief limit, and the absence of capital gains tax when they sell their properties. However, we must take account also of the little old lady who lives in a house that she cannot afford to run. There are also many people who calculated that they could afford a particular level of mortgage and rates but who now find that they can afford neither because of high interest rates and the poll tax respectively.
The House should pass a Bill before 1 April 1991 that gets rid of the poll tax and re-establishes the old rating system.
9.4 pm
Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : I have detected a certain amount of gloating among Opposition Members over the possibility that the Government might have to change their policy, but I do not think that the Opposition have any right to gloat. How can they criticise us for supposedly not listening and them blame us when we listen and propose to make changes? I am also not sure what right the Opposition have to criticise us for possibly changing policy when they have gone through a series of dizzying and sickening policy gyrations of their own in the past few years. Two years ago they were telling us that nuclear weapons were immoral and evil, yet a nuclear deterrent is now part of their policy. They should remember that fact before they start to criticise us for changing our policies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said :
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
There is no shame in the Government making changes, or developing their policies. The difference between us and the Opposition is that we remain true to our basic principles, but are prepared to change when necessary, compared with the Opposition who are ready to throw off all their most heartfelt principles in an opportunistic attempt to win power-- [Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh, but they know that virtually every policy on which they fought the general elections of 1983 and 1987 is now in the rubbish bin.
I accept that the Government made some mistakes in implementing the community charge, allowing irresponsible and profligate local authorities to increase their spending massively in the hope that the blame would rest with the Government. The first mistake we made was that the safety net blurred the distinction between careful and profligate local authorities. The second mistake was to introduce the community charge in the year after the county council elections. Everyone knows that local authorities keep their spending low in county council election year, and spend up with a vengeance the year after, and that is exactly what they did this year--with the result that the community charge was far higher than it needed to be. The Government should have frozen spending increases by local authorities in the first year of the community charge to no more than the rate of inflation. In
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that way, the community charge would have been introduced at a rate of more like £250, which would have been far more acceptable to the majority of people, bearing in mind that it is the level of the charge, rather than the principle, which is disliked by many people. Whatever mistakes the Government have made, poor coverage by the media compounded the problems. For months at the beginning of the year there was no coverage of waste and profligacy by many Labour councils. My hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin) and for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) know that I could go into great detail about profligate expenditure by Derbyshire county council--how it wastes millions of pounds on a bloated publicity department, the huge sums of money that it spent on a millionaires' playground in the Soviet Union, and how it increased staff, especially office staff, by more than any other county council. I could go into detail about the report issued today by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, which gives a damning indictment of bureaucracy and waste by the Derbyshire county council police committee. I could go into detail, but if I ran through all the wasteful spending by Derbyshire county council, I should overrun my time and I do not want to do that.Mr. Harry Barnes rose--
Mr. Oppenheim : No. Normally I would give way to the hon. Gentleman, as it is always a pleasure to hear what he has to say, but he has spoken already in the debate and he knows that we only have a short time.
Nothing epitomises waste in local government so much as the sterile and ludicrous debates about the contracting out of services. It is daft that we should debate contracting out. Local government should contract out services when private contractors would do the job best, and should keep services in house when an in-house team can do the work best. Labour local authorities do not accept that--they have to keep everything in house, regardless of value for money and performance.
It is interesting to note that, in France, even socialist and communist local councils accept the principle of contracting out, yet in England, Derbyshire county council rejected one low tender because it arrived in an envelope of the wrong colour. Keeping in with its NUPE paymasters is far more important to that council than providing good services at a reasonable cost.
Too many local councils in recent years have lost sight of the basic fact that they are there to provide reasonable services at a good cost. Instead, they concentrate on empire building and playing politics, and their profligacy has been cheered on in a disgraceful and irresponsible way by Opposition Members. Whatever system is implemented over the next few years, whichever party is in government, they will have to face the fact that local government cannot continue to increase its spending as it has done without causing grave economic problems to the country.
And I remind Opposition Members that, when they were last in power, they faced the problems of high local government spending. It was their Prime Minister who said that the "party had to end", and their Government who ended the principle of a standard automatic percentage of local government spending coming from central Government.
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Whatever the problems caused by the high spending of local government, I accept that the present Administration have made some mistakes in their implementation of the community charge arrangements. I believe that, over the summer, our former Prime Minister was badly advised and did not realise the extent of the damage done by the botched introduction of the community charge. It is ironic that some of her most loyal supporters were guilty of giving her that bad advice.That does not mean, however, that the Opposition have anything to be smug about. Labour's policy of returning to the rating system shows the bankruptcy of its thinking. Labour is content to criticise the Government without being in the least constructive itself. Having produced review after review, the party has come up with little more than a return to the rates--which would mean a return to the days when half of the electorate was able to vote without having to bear any of the burden of local authority spending.
We now need to consider the possibility of increasing rebates to help the most needy. I believe that the rebate system is the best way of targeting any help. There is no doubt that the poor need more protection from the profligate spending of Labour authorities such as Derbyshire county council.
If, in future, it is decided to change the system, the principle that everyone should contribute could probably be incorporated in a capital- values property tax. That could involve one-person households having to pay on only half the capital value of their homes, with households consisting of more than two people paying an extra 25 per cent. for each extra adult. Everyone would have to pay a minimum of 25 per cent. of the average charge. I also consider it crucial for us to increase the accountability of local government by moving to a system of unitary authorities through the abolition of county councils.
Whatever happens, however, the principle of everyone having to make a contribution must be retained. If one good thing has come out of the community charge, it is the now wide acceptance of that principle. We should remember De Tocqueville's warning in "Democracy in America" :
"Countries where lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure ; expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are assessed in a way to prevent that."
9.13 pm
Mr. Donald Dewar (Glasgow, Garscadden) : First, let me congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Benton)--as many others have done --on a very dignified and effective maiden speech. He spoke with a good deal of feeling, and some justifiable anger, about the impact of the poll tax on the area that he represents. I know that he will prove an extremely worthy and welcome representative of that area. One recent event--the arrival of a new Secretary of State for Scotland--will probably have slightly more of an impact on my life than it will on those of some other hon. Members, but it is none the less not without interest. I note that the new Secretary of State for Scotland has been quoted in the press as speaking about compassion and idealism, not ideology. At one point, he referred to dialogue, not discord. I expected to see photographs of him standing on the steps of St. Andrews house, ready
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with a handy quotation from St. Francis of Assisi. His good intentions are to be welcomed, but one of the crucial tests against which his intentions will be judged is what emerges from the great poll tax debate within Government.We live in heady and stirring times. In every corner of Westminster, Tories can be seen gathering to declare their dislike of the poll tax. On every side, the cry, familiar to all Scots, is heard : "It wasna' me." Up to now, the Scottish Office has shown no sign of conscience or remorse. A wealth of proposals have been put forward, some ill defined. Half-promises have been made. Policy formation depends on myths and prophecy. Shell-shocked Back Benchers have returned from the battlefronts of the by-elections desperate to see the back of the poll tax.
I give credit to the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) for his attempted coup. He himself, unfortunately, died in the rubble, but for all that it was a brave attempt, and it opened the floodgates. I listened with considerable interest to his speech. At one moment, he spoke, for reasons that were not clear to me, about the greatest moments in British history. I do not believe that the present shambles in the Conservative party is likely to be seen in that light. There was, however, little hard news in his speech, so the odd phrase helped.
Briefly stated, the newsline was that there is to be a thorough, constructive and fundamental review of the poll tax, although no one is clear exactly what that means. Then we had a very speculative offer--one so ill defined and vague as to have attracted the attention of the Office of Fair Trading if it had been made in the world of commerce. It was what the right hon. Gentleman was pleased to call "constructive dialogue".
In an intervention, I tried to tempt the right hon. Gentleman to say a little more about it, but I had remarkably little success. I hope that we shall hear more about it from the Secretary of State for Scotland. We know that a working party has been formed. I am not sure whether the constructive dialogue is to be within the working party. It was suggested that Opposition parties should join it, although I guess that that will not happen. I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that the constructive dialogue is more likely to be in the form of inter-party talks, but the composition, the standing of the inter-party talks in terms of policy formation, the framework within which they will be held and the agenda were left remarkably vague. I was not impressed.
I am not anything like so battle-scarred a veteran as the right hon. Gentleman in the ways of this House--and certainly not so battle-scarred in the ways of government--but my brief experience leads me to believe that, if any serious attempt is made to set up a dialogue across the party divide, feelers are put out and private discussions take place in advance. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not resent it when I say that, when such offers are made in that way, as a sort of political white rabbit out of a hat, I doubt the sincerity of the offer and of the man who makes the offer. It is so ill structured and so lacking in shape and form that the right hon. Gentleman might just as usefully have proposed putting a suggestions box outside Tory party headquarters.
Despite all the other issues that were included in his Tory party leadership manifesto by the right hon. Member for Henley--almost everything, but not the kitchen sink--the one thing that was not included was the suggestion that we should proceed with poll tax reform by
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consensus, with decision making being taken, at least in part, by Opposition parties. I suspect that it was not included in his manifesto because it did not occur to him at the time. If the right hon. Gentleman had made such a suggestion, it would have been greeted with ridicule and dismay by those who voted for him.We listened today to a Minister bereft of ideas. Like the Prime Minister, he does know what to do about the poll tax. We must remember that the Prime Minister is on record as saying that no one else does, either. Having decided that he does not know what to do about the poll tax, the Secretary of State for the Environment has concluded that the best thing to do is to ask someone else to supply a few ideas.
We are delighted to do that. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have a well-defined document already on offer. [Interruption.] I listened to many Conservative Members say that they do not like the specifics or that they do not like the theory or practicalities of it. However, they cannot say that it cannot be debated or discussed if they insist on attacking it so violently. It is there and it is a suggestion.
It is a good deal more specific than what we had from the Secretary of State today. He suggested that there were some ideas in the middle ground, some of which might be introduced quickly and some of which might not. One outstanding feature of his speech was that he did not give a single clue about what any one of those suggestions might be. It was a vacant and empty performance, full of style but with no content.
I am not satisfied. If the Secretary of State is prepared to work out an agenda and have as a starting point the fact that the poll tax will not survive the review, we may be in business and we may be able to consider what he is saying. However, I have no intention of advising my hon. Friends to accept what is no more than a political pig in a poke, a presentational device of little worth and little real value, and presented with little sincerity.
I want to ask about the Scottish Office's position, because the Secretary of State for Scotland is with us. I know a good deal about the Scottish Office's record. No one would doubt the determined loyalty of the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), who is now in charge of the poll tax in the Scottish Office. He has been, over the years, an unashamed signatory of No Turning Back tracts.
No one would doubt the loyalty to the poll tax of the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), who will keep the lost leader's cause alive long after she has gone. The hon. Member for Stirling will be pleased to know that I do not normally look upon him with a romantic eye, but in this matter he is likely to be the last of the political Jacobites, drinking toasts to his departed heroine when she is but a footnote in the history books.
The Secretary of State is of more interest. He is not a man given to the flashing phrase. In fact, he is not a phrase maker at all. However, on the poll tax he is a proven cold warrior. He has defended the indefensible at every turn. He has been the man put up to deny that any problem exists or that any radical rethinking is necessary. He never flinches from the task. If a hard heart is to be shown, whether it is to students, the disabled or those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the Secretary of State is there to
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do his duty. If the evident chaos of the system has to be denied, he is there to enunciate the Government's point of view. He has told us many times that his system is "working well" and is a "remarkable success story". Even he must feel a little embarrassed about his position at this moment.On 17 November, when the present Secretary of State for the Environment was in Scotland threatening death and destruction to the poll tax, the present Secretary of State for Scotland was blaming the local authorities, proclaiming, "Not a penny more," and talking of "minor changes" and a system that was
"in essence here to stay."
If that is an example of the flexibility of the Scottish Office in the present crisis, the Secretary of State for Scotland will understand why I and my hon. Friends are sceptical about the offer produced unexpectedly today by his colleague, the Secretary of State for the Environment.
The Secretary of State for Scotland's record is not one to warm the cockles of the heart as Christmas approaches. Before we go any further, we should have from the Government some respectable effort, not perhaps in detail but at least in outline, to define their position. No attempt has been made today by Front-Bench Members. There have been honest attempts by some Back- Bench Members who have different views, but it is totally unsatisfactory that we have had nothing from the Government Front Bench.
Does the Secretary of State for Scotland want a fundamental review? Is he prepared to consider total abolition, or is the review simply a cosmetic cover that will allow the faults of the poll tax somehow to survive, despite their unpopularity? Would the Secretary of State for Scotland switch education spending from local government to the Exchequer? Perhaps, like me, he is rather doubtful about that. From the campaign speeches of the Secretary of State for the Environment, it looks as though--to use a metaphor from earlier in the debate--he has discovered the philosopher's stone. I am extremely interested in the fiscal conjuring trick that would allow that massive switch to the Exchequer with no increase in income tax and an increase in public expenditure. It is a remarkable triumph of hope over experience. I hate to think of the sarcasm and contempt that the right hon. Gentleman would have heaped on our heads had we produced a fiscal formula of that kind. At least we know one thing : the Secretary of State for the Environment will never again be able to attack us for our spending plans, given his own fraudulent prospectus.
The right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir. R. Boyson)--who I always find an endearing figure in his own quaint way--had a solution. He likened the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a squirrel, and I see his point ; the right hon. Gentleman does look a little like a squirrel. He suggested that the squirrel should bring out its nuts. A good deal of that went on on the Conservative Benches during the debate.
The strength of the argument for the switch was diminished by the article in The Times of 10 May, in which the Secretary of State contradicted himself and undermined his argument so thoroughly. That was not the only expression of doubt. In April 1988, a splendid speech by the Secretary of State appeared in Hansard. I should not have known about it had it not been kindly brought to my attention by the hon. Member for Stirling, who wrote
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about it to his constituency chairman a tactic with which the Secretary of State may be familiar. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman received a reply.The hon. Gentleman recorded the remarkable statement made by the Secretary of State for the Environment in April 1988, in which he completely demolished the idea, which he was then advocating in the public prints, of a switch of education expenditure. To his surprised constituency chairman, the hon. Gentleman belaboured the Secretary of State and explained that that was why he would certainly not vote for him. As far as one can gather, the general drift of the hon. Gentleman's remarks was that the right hon. Gentleman was an intellectual shambles, although I do not want to pry further into that private grief.
We want to know a bit more about the options. Perhaps the Secretary of State for Scotland will tell us whether he is in favour of a referendum every time a council's spending exceeds a certain limit. Perhaps he will tell us whether he is in favour of banding, which he has condemned so strongly in the past, or whether he is even prepared to consider it.
One fact that emerges from the confusion in this debate is that the Labour party alone has a coherent defined policy. [Laughter.] Conservative Members may disagree with it, but it is there. Let us look at some of the other parties--for example, the Scottish National party, which is also in an embarrassing position. I accept entirely that many of the nationalists feel very strongly and passionately about the effectiveness of the non- payment campaign and espouse it most sincerely. They must be dismayed by the fact that their leader, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) has said publicly in the prints that the banding of the poll tax would be equivalent to the abolition of the poll tax and that the SNP would then call off its campaign of resistance.
Let me quote from The Guardian of 28 November :
"Yesterday Alex Salmond, the new SNP leader, climbed on the back of the Heseltine-Major-Hurd poll tax review"
that must have been extremely uncomfortable for him--
"to argue that, once the charge is banded it ceases to be the poll tax'. The SNP, therefore, would end its rebellion when amended legislation was tabled."
I put it kindly to the hon. Gentleman, because I do not want a major debate, that there is now some doubt, at least, about his party's stance.
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