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Ms. Dawn Primarolo (Bristol, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker : I shall call the hon. Lady to raise a point of order in view of a misunderstanding that occurred earlier.
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Ms. Primarolo : During Prime Minister's Question Time, I asked a question-- [Interruption.] I urge Conservative Members to listen for a moment. They should calm down. I asked a question about the extension to other deserving cases of the poll tax exemptions. In the baying and braying that goes on during Question Time, the Prime Minister said that I had not paid my poll tax. Unfortunately for the right hon. Gentleman, he was wrong in that statement. For the future, may I urge all right hon. and hon. Members who utter such comments in the Chamber to check their facts?
Mr. Speaker : I allowed the hon. Lady to make that point of order to put the record straight because I believe that most of those in the Chamber at the time took her nod to be a negative, but it was evidently a positive.
Mr. Heseltine : Let me say at once how much I admire the hon. Lady for having complied with the law. Although I am not saying that she feels exactly as indignant as I do about the fact that so many of her right hon. and hon. Friends have not paid their poll tax, I must advise her that the only effect that that can have is that her constituents will be likely to find their costs rising because others do not pay.
I return to what has now been so clearly revealed about the difficulties of the Opposition in this matter. It should not be a great surprise to my hon. Friends because when the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) was responsible for the Labour party's local government policies, he described his party's dilemma with admirable clarity when he said :
"I'm saying to the NEC policy makers, I'm saying Hang on a minute, what's our policy on local government? Putting it at its boldest, we haven't got a policy, that's the actual truth".
Time has marched on, but the policy making has not.
Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr) rose
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Gentleman has popped up, so I shall give way to him.
Mr. Rooker : The Secretary of State should make it clear that he is quoting from an article in The Independent of September 1987, which was true because our consultation process and policy formulation on local government had been interrupted during the general election. The article then stated--the Secretary of State will not have the guts to read this out --that my party was being the more honest about local government by admitting that we were going back to square one to look for a better way of funding local government.
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Gentleman has made my point. There is a gap, a ravine, between us, but this process takes time. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we shall reach conclusions that people will understand, but, three years on, the Opposition still have not done so.
Mr. Campbell-Savours : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker-- [Interruption.] Mr. Speaker : Order. What is the point of order?
Mr. Campbell-Savours : May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to read the motion and the amendment that are on the Order Paper? Will you ensure, as you normally do, that right
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hon. and hon. Members keep to the motion and the amendment? The Secretary of State is debating a matter that is not on the Order Paper.Mr. Speaker : The Secretary of State is addressing himself to the Government amendment.
Mr. Heseltine : By this time, I am sure that the House is beginning to share my acute anxiety for the hon. Member for Dagenham as he finds himself--
Mr. Alistair Darling (Edinburgh, Central) rose--
The hon. Member for Dagenham is now facing increasing difficulties defending the position of Labour authorities which consistently overcharge at local level. As the House knows--because I have read it into the record previously--we now have the clearest indication that in all classes of local authority--the London authorities, the metropolitan districts, the shire districts, and in England as a whole--the fact is that, when stripped of the safety net, Labour authorities consistently set higher poll tax charges than all other political parties. The evidence is not only a matter of history--the evidence is there for the coming year. This week's Municipal Journal gives the figures for the counties. Only three of the 22 counties that are controlled outright by the Conservatives or by the Conservatives in conjunction with other parties have set their budgets above their SSA, whereas all but three of the 13 authorities where the Labour party is in charge or in joint control have exceeded the level of their SSA. Again, it is the old, old story--
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford) rose--
The next difficulty for the hon. Member for Dagenham is that, in order to justify his talks, he has to talk in terms of cuts when all hon. Members are fully aware that there are no cuts. The Government have been responsible for injecting an additional £4.25 billion of central support to keep down the level of charges this year. If the Labour party claims to be fit to be the Government of this country, it ought to tell the people just how much above £4.25 billion it believes that a national economy can stand in any one year. But it cannot do that.
The next argument with which we are all too familiar is that all the changes bring about dramatic cuts. There is an annual ritual of claiming that cuts will have to be made. Yet time and again the anticipated cuts that we hear about do not materilise when the budgets are set. Last year we were told that the Government's proposals would have the most serious implications in many authorities ; but charges broadly within acceptable levels were introduced and the cuts disappeared. Economies were found without great difficulties.
The hon. Member for Dagenham has now taken to suggesting that the assumptions on which we based the community charge reduction scheme were ill founded. He suggests that we are working on some notional calculation, as opposed to the actual calculations on which the scheme is based. He managed to put out a document which suggested that 26 authorities are in significant excess of the figures that we estimated. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) said that if local authorities set their charge in line with the Government's assessment
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of what they needed to spend, the charge would be £380. The list published by the hon. Member for Dagenham included 26 authorities, 13 of which had set their charges at £380 or, indeed, less. The hon. Gentleman reveals clearly that he has not understood the essence of our announcement.Dr. Lewis Moonie (Kirkcaldy) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the Secretary of State is speaking, three of his hon. Friends have fallen asleep. Will you ask the Serjeant at Arms to check the ventilation in the House to find out whether it is detrimental to the health of us all?
Mr. Speaker : That is one of the common accusations made in this place. Sometimes when there is some noise, hon. Members lean their head sideways towards the amplifiers.
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Member for Dagenham failed to understand that we took as the basis of our assumptions the actual community charges for the current year but that we had to adjust them to take account of the safety net. It is obvious that we would not have established a community charge reduction scheme in which the safety net was included. So we adjusted the figure for the actual charge, net of the safety net. In some cases that meant that we increased the assumption on which the benefits are provided. It is apparent to anyone who examines them that the figures produced by the hon. Gentleman show that our assumptions are largely accurate. The figures for the list of authorities support everything that we have said, even on the hon. Gentleman's calculations.
Mr. Kenneth Hind (Lancashire, West) : Does my right hon. Friend agree that one fundamental thing which the British public understand is that any fool can spend money but that it takes a lot more ability to spend it well and that that is what local authorities should do? If he takes the opportunity in his busy day to examine Lancashire county council, which is Labour controlled, he will find that the authority commissioned a report from the consultants P and A, who advised it that its social services were expensive and badly delivered and recommended a series of alterations to the service. The authority totally neglected those recommendations and a poor service to the public is continuing as a result. That authority continues to increase its spending well above the rate of inflation. Perhaps not only my right hon. Friend but the voters of Ribble Valley will take note of that.
Mr. Heseltine : I have not the slightest doubt that my hon. Friend is right in saying that well-managed Conservative local government is much more likely to give value for money to its electors and will continue to do so.
The last area of increasing embarrassment is the failure of the hon. Member for Dagenham to take part in the consultation process to which we have invited him. Undoubtedly there was a chance there for the Labour party to measure up to the responsibilities of a national party genuinely interested in a constructive debate. I could not have asked for greater evidence of its reasons for doubt than the speech by the hon. Member for Dagenham who said that he did not take part in consultations because he was frightened that we would put his figures through the computer. That is the greatest giveaway of all time. He will not put his figures through the computer because he does not know the implications of the scheme on which he is campaigning.
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The hon. Gentleman blames us for taking our time in a thorough review to get these matters right. We will take what time is necessary for that comprehensive review and will come forward with policies which we believe are right and on which we can secure the support of the British people. We will not fall into the Labour party trap of producing words without facts to underline them. It is quite apparent that the Opposition are more interested in raising the anxieties of the British people than in contributing to a constructive debate. That is why my right hon. and hon. Friends will vote against the motion.4.31 pm
Mr. Peter Archer (Warley, West) : Notwithstanding his robust peroration, I hope that the Secretary of State for the Environment will forgive me when I say that he was rather longer on history than on contemporary facts. In a lengthy career in the House, I do not recall a Minister making it clearer that he had been given a distasteful brief, that he was speaking to a case which he found difficult to argue, and that altogether he would have preferred a different job if one had been on offer.
I propose to follow the Secretary of State in not referring to any of the facts of higher national finance, but I shall do so for a rather different reason. I want to tell a simple parish-pump story because the poll tax is about parish pumps. At this time of year, most councils consider their budgets for the forthcoming year. The rate of tax in Sandwell in the west midlands was announced at the end of last week. It will be £459--an increase of £36 over last year. Colleagues and I who know Sandwell have spoken many times in the House about its problems. By any possible criterion and on any possible perception, it has more than its fair share of problems. It has all the difficulties of an inner city, although an accident of history has meant that it is not an inner city and so has missed much of the help that would otherwise be available. The increase in poll tax will not be warmly welcomed by the people of Sandwell. The blow will not be cushioned when they discover that even that figure has been achieved only by the imposition of further cuts in public services.
I shall offer the Secretary of State a few facts about Sandwell in case he is not as familiar with them in his new job as he may be later. He will not be surprised to learn that the amount available from Government grants and industry taken together, the jargon for which is aggregate external finance, has increased by 8.7 per cent. The gratitude of the people of Sandwell is tempered a little by three reflections. The first is that inflation is running at 10.5 per cent. The second is that that increase did not come from the Government at all. In fact, total Government grants, in absolute terms, have decreased. In the forthcoming year, the figure will be £200,000 less than that for the current year.
The whole increase, plus the deficiency that had to be made up, came from the uniform business rate. Not a day passes when I do not receive correspondence from business men in my area saying that there have never been so many businesses calling in the receiver, that never has unemployment in Sandwell risen in such a way. In December of last year unemployment in the west midlands rose by 8.8 per cent. Business men are saying, "Here we
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are, having to look at all our overheads in order to be able to stay in business, yet we are making payments for which councils might otherwise have looked to the Government."For the Secretary of State, the good news--if the absence of bad news can count as good news--is that the poll tax rate that has been set has been achieved because, in the forthcoming year, poll tax payers in Sandwell will not pay a contribution of £26 per head by way of relief for more affluent areas. Over the last 12 months their hardship was aggravated by the fact that they were contributing to the safety net--something that, traditionally, has been regarded as the responsibility of the Government.
The third reflection is that the figure has been increased as a result of provision for people who have not paid. This afternoon we have heard a little from the Government side on that theme. At present the non- collection rate in Sandwell is running at 25 per cent. That does not indicate a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the council to collect ; indeed, it is despite a sequence of reminders, final notices, summonses, liability orders, seven-day letters and information requests. Admittedly, some of the people who have not paid are those who are always prepared to take a free ride. Every area has a number of such people. Furthermore, some people are using non-payment as a means of protest. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said, the Government have succeeded in turning people who are normally law abiding to the point of conformism into people who are prepared to go outside the law as a means of protest.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne) : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Archer : I shall give way in a moment, but, lest the hon. Gentleman forestall the point that I am making, I shall first complete it.
I hold no brief for those who are refusing to pay. I believe that the impact of their protest is felt not by the Government but by their own neighbours in Sandwell.
Mr. Wilshire : Will the hon. Gentleman make it absolutely clear that the free riders whom he denunciates include his hon. Friends who are setting a bad example by breaking the law and thereby indicating that the Labour party believes in law breaking?
Mr. Archer : Of course I am happy to make that absolutely clear. I have already said that I hold no brief for those who do not pay their poll tax. But the hon. Gentleman has failed to notice that I made a distinction between free riders and those who, as a mistaken form of protest, choose not to pay their poll tax. The two categories are not necessarily the same. One of the tragedies is that people in my area who, two or three years ago, would have been horrified at the suggestion that they might go outside the law are now doing exactly that because they think--misguidedly, I believe-- that that is a proper form of protest. This is not a record of which any Government ought to be proud.
Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend would wish to include in his perfectly correct denunciation of the non-payment campaigns an interesting movement which is growing in Scotland and which will undoubtedly be seen in the south before very long. I refer to the Tory non-payers--leading figures in the Conservative party, holding office
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bestowed by the party, who are inciting Tories in Scotland not to pay that portion of the poll tax that they believe to be due to non-collection. In so doing, those people make no attempt to differentiate, as my right hon. and learned Friend rightly does, between wilful non-payment by people who are perfectly able to pay and the vast majority of non-payment, which is endemic in the tax itself. Will my right hon. and learned Friend join me in condemning the Tory non-payers? I am sure that he would like to hear from the Government Front Bench a denunciation of that form of non-payment.Mr. Archer : I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I could show him letters from my constituents who say that they have always voted Conservative but do not intend to pay the poll tax, and the reply that I send to them is precisely the same as the one I send to everyone else.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon) : Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that many hundreds of thousands of people who cannot pay and who do not go to court are the very people who should go to court and have someone to speak on their behalf? Of 1,000 cases in Caernarfon last Tuesday, only 40 were present and they were people who refused to pay as a matter of principle and who sought to make their views known in court. Those issues need to be heard in court.
Mr. Archer : The hon. Gentleman has forestalled something that I was about to say.
The majority of those in Sandwell who have not paid do not fall into either category--the free riders or the protesters. They are people who, as the hon. Gentleman said, cannot pay. Hardly a surgery passes when I do not have someone in tears because they have never failed to pay a debt, they have never owed a halfpenny, but they do not know how they will pay their poll tax. Every post brings letters to the same effect.
The council must draw a sensitive line between enforcing payment and adding to the hardships of those who already have too many. It may be because councils are reluctant to enforce the poll tax where they know there is hardship that we do not hear about such cases. In the coming year Sandwell council will have to make allowance for those who will not pay--
Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware of the appalling situation of some of those in receipt of benefit who see money diverted to the poll tax leaving them on a low level of support after they have paid what is necessary by way of rent, the poll tax and so on? Many who are paying the poll tax find themselves in abject poverty in the process.
Mr. Archer : It is not always those who have not paid their poll tax but those who have who pose the problem. If time permitted, I would have elaborated on that, but Mr. Speaker has enjoined us to be brief.
Many now qualify for some transitional relief, and I hope that some of the ill-thought-out anomalies with which we have lived for the past 12 months are being ironed out. I wrote to the Secretary of State, as he may remember, about a student in my constituency. When that student was at school, his family received child benefit. He finished school on 5 September and began a course at university on 3 October. At that time, he qualified for relief. For all common-sense purposes, he had been in
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full-time education throughout, but because the poll tax is calculated on a daily basis, during that month neither he nor his family received any relief.The Secretary of State sent me a kind reply to my letter. I do not know whether it will assist the right hon. Gentleman with his party, but his letter was rather warmer than might have been wise. However, I shall not publish it in detail. But the right hon. Gentleman admitted that that case represented an "administrative untidiness". He said :
"Should the opportunity occur in the future, we will carefully consider what can be done to simplify this area of legislation." I hope that he and his hon. Friends will do exactly that. But we are not asking for simplicity, although, in any administration, that is devoutly to be wished for. We are asking for justice. Many anomalies need to be ironed out.
In the coming year more will qualify. But, as the criterion adopted by the Government depends on former rate bills and when people last moved, most hon. Members will have a succession of callers at their advice bureaux asking why they are paying more than Mr. So-and-So when there is no real difference in their financial positions. That is the irony of the situation.
Sandwell council calculates that 80 per cent. of families in the area will qualify for some form of transitional relief. That is the ultimate confession of confusion. Any burden imposed by a Government should be flexible and make provision for those who cannot bear it. There will normally be some exceptional cases, but if those exceptional cases amount to 80 per cent. that amounts to the logic of "Alice through the Looking- glass". It is an admission that the general principle is in chaos.
The council has been realistic in recognising that, despite all its effort, it is prudent to make provision for a 10 per cent. non-payment during the current year and next year, and that has added £60 to every poll tax payer's bill. That will cause resentment, which I for one certainly understand. However, I suspect that that resentment may sometimes be directed at the wrong people. If it were directed at the right people, it would be directed at those who introduced the scheme. But it certainly will not make for that harmonious community for which many of us have worked so hard for so many years.
The final fact of which the Government should be aware and with which the residents of Sandwell will have to live is that the figure of £459 has been achieved only by cuts in local services. The Government have attempted to raise unrealistic expectations by referring to an average poll tax of £380. That is a cruel joke because they must have known that for most councils that would have entailed further cuts, and it would have assumed 100 per cent. collection, with no non-payers. Last year the Government indicated expectations in Sandwell which, had they been implemented, would have entailed a 10 per cent. cut in teaching staff, a reduction in street cleaning and lighting, a cut in the warden service for the elderly, the end of catering concessions for senior citizens, the closing of every public convenience in the borough and many other privations. The council did not encompass so draconian a solution, but it did have to impose substantial cuts last year. A further reduction of £1.8 million will be required this year in the education budget, a 3 per cent. cut in technical services, further job losses by council employees in an area
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where job losses are already increasing and where there are more than enough, and there will be further complaints that the quality of life in Sandwell has fallen yet further.I have some sympathy with the position in which the Secretary of State finds himself, and I can well believe that other problems exist which he would prefer to address. But there is only one way to rectify this position --a confession that the whole concept of the poll tax was a ghastly mistake and to listen to what Opposition Members have been saying for the past two years.
4.49 pm
Sir William Shelton (Streatham) : I want the House to hear me on behalf of my constituents who live in Lambeth. This is indeed a cry from the heart. The right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) has described the stress that is caused to his constituents. I wish that in Streatham we had the problems that he seems to have in Warley, West.
In my constituency the community charge is capped at £521 per head. The anxiety and the despair of people who are driven to break the law for the first time in their lives can be imagined. Their despair springs from the introduction of the community charge, but by heavens, it is aided and abetted by the incompetence and gross overspending of Lambeth council.
As to incompetence, the low recovery of community charge in Lambeth is not so much due to refusal to pay, although the leader of Lambeth council has announced that she has refused to pay ; it is more due to the incompetence of the council. By the end of August, 39,000 bills had not been issued. By the end of November, 13,000 bills had not been issued--let alone reminders. I am talking about the initial bills. The chairman of my Conservative association has still not received a demand ; I cannot believe that that is because of political favouritism. By mid December, £32 million out of an expected total of £64 million had been recovered--a recovery rate of 50 per cent., not so much because of refusal to pay but because many people had not received bills. That shows gross incompetence. I shall give the House two small examples. A constituent wrote to me :
"Unfortunately the situation has become rather out of hand with payment books arriving on a daily basis. To my knowledge we are now in receipt of at least 18 different booklets, all requesting different amounts."
Mr. Wigley : That is not uncommon.
Sir William Shelton : The hon. Gentleman clearly lives in Lambeth. There is a block of 10 flats in my constituency with an address of 76 such- and-such road ; I will not name the road. One letter arrived from the council, addressed to "The Occupier", with one community charge form in it- -another example of inefficiency.
The council is guilty of gross overspending. The spending forecast, as far as I know because it is difficult to find the figures, is £345 million for 1991-92. The capping level is £307 million, so there is a gap of £38 million. That is despite a very generous settlement ; total external support from the Government is £268 million, the highest settlement of all inner and outer London boroughs.
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In addition, it is calculated that further provision will probably have to be made for such things as bad debts and the ending of the pension fund holiday which the council has been running for some years. The gap will probably be over £50 million which, uncapped, would give a community charge not of £521 but of about £800. Of course, I expect the charge to be capped, but how can one cap a borough and remove £30 million from its expenditure, let alone £50 million, and still give my constituents adequate services? I do not see how the circle can be squared. I support we shall win a compromise. The community charge will be £600, £550 or £650, and once again services will get worse.Mr. Wilson : I have listened to the hon. Gentleman with great interest and sympathy. He has been informative about conditions in Lambeth. Will he acknowledge that in other parts of the country it is possible for the poll tax to rise by 30 to 35 per cent. and at the same time for cuts of tens of millions of pounds to be made, not because of incompetence or the non-issue of bills, but because of the mechanism of the poll tax and particularly its gearing effect, which means that everything is piled on to the poll tax because the local authority has no control over any other source of revenue? I am happy to accept what the hon. Gentleman has said. Will he accept what I say?
Sir William Shelton : I accept entirely what the hon. Gentleman says. The poll tax is highly geared, but I must tell the hon. Gentleman that when my constituents in Lambeth look around, they look to Wandsworth next door, which rides along with a poll tax of £148. The services there are better. I hear that Wandsworth will have a vast explosion in its community charge next year to something like £170. That is the direction in which my constituents look. I welcome very much my right hon. Friend's community charge reduction scheme. I spoke to the private office of my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) which was very helpful. As a result, I issued a press release containing figures which I am sure are right because they were given to me by his office. Two community charge payers living in the same place since March 1990, on average rates, will receive between them £470 ; that will rise to £730. That is very much to be welcomed, and I am grateful for it. Clearly that cannot be a long-term solution, as the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West said. One cannot go on paying such amounts year after year.
What is to be done? I know that my right hon. Friend is very much enmeshed in the matter. Indeed, I wrote to him in December. The proposition which I put to him was for a minimum community charge plus some form of property tax. However, on reflection, I realise that a minimum community charge would cost the same to raise as the present community charge ; I understand that the collection cost runs at 3 per cent. If the community charge was knocked down to an average of £100 or so, the cost of collection would be outrageous. I read today's report in The Times with great interest. Whether it is true, I do not know. The House knows what is suggested--a property tax by floor area plus a personal premium. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), who is no longer in his place, was very rude about it, but I like it. I would certainly support it ; indeed I will not conceal from my right hon. Friend that I would support
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almost anything rather than the community charge. I like that proposal because it still has a measure of accountability and I warmly welcome it, if it is true.However, neither that proposal nor a local income tax would solve the problem of my constituents due to the incompetence and overspending of Lambeth council. For instance, if we had a property tax with a personal charge, I guess that a one-bedroom or studio apartment in Lambeth would have a tax of £2,000 a year. I do not know what the charge would be, but it would be outrageous.
If I may give my ideas, gained from what I might call the Lambeth experience which I have endured for some years, I would urge on my right hon. Friend--I know he has this in mind--to seek major reductions in local government provision. It is wrong to draw conclusions from a single experience, but my experience has led me to doubt the efficiency of local government. Hon. Members may have very efficient local government in their areas, but that is not the case in Lambeth. Reductions in provision simplify the duties and ask less from local government.
I ask my right hon. Friend to agree with our right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) and to make schools grant maintained, controlled not by Whitehall, but by the schools. Incidentally, there is something in that because there is a rumour in Lambeth that the council intends to raid the budget for other purposes. The SSA for education is £125 million, plus the transitional grant of £6.3 million, making £131 million. I am told that Lambeth is seeking to set an education budget of £111 million and wishes to use the rest perhaps to make the area more nuclear-free, or something like that.
Cannot we reduce the responsibilities placed on these local councillors who have a job to do, most of them in their spare time? Lambeth employs 19,000 people. How can anyone employ 19,000 people in their spare time? What about local government social services? I understand that there are two or three experiments in which a trust has been set up to run the local social services. Perhaps this could be looked at. There are also the police, fire and ambulance services to be considered.
My constituents are genuinely in real need and I feel deeply concerned about it. I seek help for them from my right hon. Friend and from the Government. I ask them to lift from my constituents the burden that they are suffering, placed upon them by Lambeth council. 5.2 pm
Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : I do not entirely agree with the hon. Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) when he says that almost anything would be better than the present poll tax, but we Liberal Democrats have some sympathy with that view. The only thing I would say to him is that if one were to cut the services that councils are required to provide there is always the risk that one ends up paying for nothing but bureaucracy and inefficiency, and that might be even less popular. One of the ways in which local authorities can be controlled is to make them more democratic and, while I have heard many arguments advanced against electoral reform nationally, based on strong government, I find it hard to believe that it would not help the situation--at least of many local authorities where extremists gain control--if there were a measure of electoral reform. However, the substance of this debate is opposition to the poll tax and the great unanswered question in this
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debate so far has been what the alternative should be. That was resonant in everything that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen, including the Secretary of State, said. That is the background brief to what they are saying--small changes now in the hope of better things to come, but no decisions on what that means. There is an irony here, because in Committee the Government and the Liberal Democrats both had something to put forward. Now it is only the Liberal Democrats. The Labour party failed to come up with any alternative during those long debates. Again, the Labour party's inability to play the role of an Opposition and to provide an alternative, not simply to oppose, was exposed for all to see. It has shown that in today's debate again-- [Interruption]-- even though Labour Members may say "nonsense". The fact is that not only did the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) fail to give a single indication of the Opposition's alternative, but the most recent articles that they have published on this, while going into fine detail on the difficulties involved, the lack of information before taking up government, and all sorts of other excuses, failed to give any idea of what people would have to pay under the Labour party's system. Without that it is impossible to believe that the Labour party can claim to be putting forward a credible alternative.The debate needs answers to two simple questions. First, when will the Government abolish the poll tax? Secondly, what will be put in its place? Dissatisfaction with the poll tax was widespread long before the measure was even passed. It was widespread within the Conservative party as well as outside it, although Conservatives allowed it to go through. Now that people have had a year of paying the tax, the resentment and hatred of this unfair burden goes much deeper than even the Secretary of State realises. He in particular must finally realise what everyone else knew from the beginning--that the poll tax is unworkable, unpopular and must go.
An enormous amount of hardship is caused to low-income groups. Local government finance is in chaos. The tax is everywhere deeply unpopular. The high level of non-payment is undermining respect for the law. Radical change, not just review, must be on the immediate agenda.
I give as an example my own area. We were once told that the Bills could be expected to be around £130 to £140 in Carrick and Restormel councils. Later I published figures showing £170 to £180 per head and was told by Conservatives that I was exaggerating. Next year's figure in Carrick will be £390 and in Restormel £365, if the proposals that are being put forward are accepted. The Government deceived their own party and Members of Parliament into supporting a Bill that should never have been allowed to pass through this House in the first place. While our figures are nevertheless comparatively low, and the Liberal Democrat councillors are to be congratulated on keeping them below average levels, the truth is that, in an area where average wages are among the lowest in the country, poll tax levels are causing hardship for many people.
Only the Conservative Government can be blamed, both because they have cut support to local authorities and because they have introduced a system that is wholly unrelated to ability to pay. Only the Liberal Democrat alternative of local income tax can produce fairness in the financing of local government.
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Dr. John G. Blackburn (Dudley, West) : I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. I have listened intently to his comments suggesting that the community charge in his area would be anything between £130 and £180. He has produced these ghastly figures. Does he agree that there are many local authorities, such as the one in which this Palace is situated, that have brought forward a community charge of £195? Does he also agree that there is a need for two things to be recognised? The first is that there is a silent majority that finds the poll tax acceptable as an alternative to rates? Does he agree that there are many people, some in my constituency, who are now saving over £1,000 a year? Secondly, there is a need for a fundamental review of the efficiency of this tax.
Mr. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman should have a word with the Secretary of State for the Environment who would undoubtedly put him right about his claim that there is support for the poll tax. I do not believe that many members of the Conservative party believe that ; nor does the Secretary of State. That is why he is undertaking a review. I certainly do not believe that the great majority of people in this country believe in the poll tax. The Government are already talking about replacing it.
The Government tell us that we must wait for the conclusions of the review and that it will take until 1993 at the earliest to replace the poll tax. The Liberal Democrats know that it could be replaced sooner than that. It could be replaced within the space of a given financial year, provided that the decision to proceed with its replacement was taken six months before the start of that financial year. That is because the base for our local income tax system is already in place. It could be implemented in a short period because the Inland Revenue already holds the necessary information. There is no need to have any valuation of the tax base, which would be necessary with any new property tax. That is an important reason for supporting such a tax.
If the poll tax is abolished, the great expense that local authorities have suffered in implementing it will have been wasted. We do not want any new scheme to involve similar costs. That argument, if no other, should carry weight with the Treasury which, if newspaper reports are to be believed, has blocked implementation by the Secretary of State of a local income tax scheme. I assume that the necessary legislation could be quickly pushed through the House. There are many precedents for rapid action when things go wrong, as they have done with the poll tax.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : The hon. Gentleman says that information about income tax is available. Is he aware that tax offices tax people according to their place of employment, not according to their place of residence? Therefore, local authorities and the Inland Revenue would not know the tax base upon which to charge a local income tax.
Mr. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman refers to the present system, but the Inland Revenue knows where people live. That information is already available.
If the reports today in The Times and other newspapers are correct, the Secretary of State must tell the House whether he is prepared to support a system that is not directly related to ability to pay. That is the nub of the matter. For all the sophistry of those who support other schemes, only one scheme is related to ability to pay--a form of local income tax.
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Mr. John Battle (Leeds, West) : Can the hon. Gentleman explain how a local income tax system would redistribute resources from wealthy areas to poorer areas and between areas of high unemployment, where people still need services, and areas of low unemployment where more money would be received in the form of income tax?
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