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The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine) : My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg) asked the hon. Gentleman a specific question. Will there be provision for capping in any systems of local government finance that a Labour Government might introduce?
Mr. Gould : Unlike the Secretary of State, I shall be precise. There will be no provision for capping in any legislation that we introduce. I look forward to hearing similar precision from the right hon. Gentleman when he is asked questions about his proposals. As I have said, there is plenty for the Government to repent. However, it is the genuineness of the Government's repentance that is in doubt. We have had no word of regret
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or apology from them, only the repellent spectacle of a Government who are trying desperately to shift the blame on to the victims of their errors. We have had no attempt to correct the error at the first opportunity--only vague promises that the poll tax would, at some future date, make way for some almost equally objectionable successor. Worst of all, we have a Government who, with the Local Government Finance Bill, are pretending to put an end to the poll tax, but who are keeping the poll tax and its malign principles very much alive. In fact, the Government are about to put a new poll tax on to the statute book.We know that the Tory flagship was found to be unseaworthy. We know that there was a mutiny against the captain, who was made to walk the plank, but the attempt to scuttle the flagship has been an abject failure. The poll tax remains afloat--waterlogged, it is true, but still drifting and a danger to shipping. As the mutineers deserted the sinking ship--"mutineers" being a rather more parliamentary term than the one that usually springs to mind when people are described as deserting ships--it has become clear that the new vessel is no more seaworthy than the old. The council tax suffers from exactly the same design faults as the old poll tax, and it is captained this time by someone who does not seem to know where he is or what he is doing. We should, of course, have been warned. After all, this is the Prime Minister who said of the poll tax :
"I don't know what we'll have to do and neither does anyone else." On that issue at least, the Prime Minister has been as good as his word. This is the Prime Minister who apparently believes that wish is as good as fact, and who told The House Magazine that the poll tax had already been abolished. If the Prime Minister really believes his own propaganda, it is no wonder that he is all at sea on the council tax, Europe, the health service--on everything. In my constituency, the latest joke is to ask, "How does the Prime Minister differ from a supermarket trolley?" The answer is that a supermarket trolley has a mind of its own.
This is the Prime Minister who sought to excuse the poll tax fiasco on the grounds that, to use his own words, it had been "bounced" through the Cabinet. Whatever the truth of that excuse, the right hon. Gentleman was one of the guilty men who then bounced the poll tax through the House of Commons, the Tory party, the local government world and through all the worries and fears which, sadly, turned out to be so well founded.
The Prime Minister was one of those who pooh-poohed all the doubts and difficulties about the poll tax and arrogantly insisted that he and his ministerial colleagues knew best. They and he are at it again. If the poll tax was bounced through, the new poll tax is being smashed through. The preparation for the poll tax was positively leisurely by comparison with the sketchy and hasty pretence at consultation that has proceeded the new measure and by comparison with the draconian guillotine with which we are now threatened, which offers us only half the debating time that was given to the poll tax.
Mr. Robin Squire (Hornchurch) : The hon. Gentleman has laid some emphasis on constancy. Roughly speaking, how many changes of policy on this subject have emanated from the relevant shadow spokesmen since--I shall be
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reasonable--1987, and does the hon. Gentleman still cling to the four-part valuation system that I believe was part of his latest policy earlier this year?Mr. Gould : The hon. Gentleman has betrayed his ignorance of such matters by giving that date. Our proposals were published in full well over 15 months ago. We have not departed from them. They have been widely accepted and welcomed and we are intent on proceeding towards implementing them at the first opportunity, because they are the only and best way of getting rid of the poll tax.
Returning to the new Local Government Finance Bill, earlier I recalled the assurances that were used to allay the fears of Conservative Back Benchers as well as hon. Members of other parties and people throughout the country when the poll tax was railroaded through the House. We are sure to hear the Secretary of State and his minions make the same assurances and the same arrogant and airy dismissals of people's doubts and fears as we heard when the poll tax made its progress through the House. This time, surely, Conservative Members can have no excuse if they fall for it yet again. They are on notice that a disaster of poll tax proportions is in the making. Their constituents will not listen this time to pleas of "not guilty". What, after all, are they for if not to protect their constituents against the mistakes of government?
However, it is not only Members of Parliament who are under pressure. Local authorities, which are having to struggle with the dying spasms of the poll tax without any relief from the ludicrous irrationality of the 20 per cent. contribution rule, are at the same time having to prepare for a totally new and untried tax, involving a new valuation register, prepared on new valuation criteria, banded according to new principles, and requiring the preparation and maintenance of a new register, new discounts and new rebates, all to be handled by new software as yet unwritten.
It is no wonder that there is increasing scepticism about whether all that can be done in time to issue the new council tax bills in April 1993, irrespective of when the Bill completes its parliamentary passage. It is not only the Opposition who are saying that ; so are all the independent experts and institutions, the software companies and an increasing number of local authority treasurers. Their concerns are understandable, and centre on the administrative problems that they will face. Those administrative problems are scarcely affected by the timetable for the legislation. The Government's real reason for pushing the legislation through in such a hurry has nothing to do with the administrative timetable, but everything to do with their own short-term electoral considerations and with the need to clear the decks in case they should suddenly acquire the nerve to face the electorate in March.
It now seems virtually certain that, under the Government's proposals, poll tax bills will keep on coming--not just next year--1993--but in 1994 also. It is no wonder that the Secretary of State, true to form, and realising that his Bill is a recipe for keeping the poll tax alive for another two years, is busily trying to shift the responsibility for yet another failure. That is all of a piece with his characteristic refusal to serve on the Committee, and yet more evidence of his unwillingness to face the music.
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The Secretary of State's claim that we may somehow be responsible for delaying abolition of the poll tax is a piece of barefaced cheek from a Secretary of State who seems to believe that the more outrageous his claim the less it will be subject to scrutiny. We yield to no one in our anxiety to get rid of the poll tax at the first opportunity. That is why we have repeatedly offered the Government our co- operation in pursuing the one guaranteed way of abolishing the poll tax by 1993--the enactment of our fair rates proposals.The Government have turned down that offer, and have insisted on their own proposals. We regret that fact. Nevertheless--I wish to make this crystal clear--we have no intention of delaying the Bill or filibustering during its passage through the House. Indeed, we remain ready to discuss with the Government, at any time, a sensible timetable which will allow proper time for debate without jeopardising the Bill's passage.
We will insist, however, on doing our proper job as an Opposition. This is not just a Bill to get rid of the poll tax. It is a Bill to replace the poll tax with a new tax--a new poll tax--and we are determined to ensure that this time the measure receives the scrutiny that it needs. We will not be deterred from proper parliamentary scrutiny by the antics of the Secretary of State. I look to Conservative Members for support in undertaking that important task. That task is crucial because the new tax is deeply flawed and it inherits many of the most objectionable features of the poll tax. Like the poll tax, it is totally untried and untested. Like the poll tax, it is complicated and difficult to administer. Indeed, by combining a totally new property tax--if one likes, a capital values tax-- with the head tax element of the poll tax, it is arguably even more complicated than the poll tax to administer and collect. It will be a tax, in other words, on the roof over one's head and on the heads under one's roof.
We shall pay a heavy price for these complications. The collection costs will be high ; the collection levels will be low--certainly lower than in the case of fair rates or the rates of times gone by. Those two factors will inevitably push up the size of council tax bills, just as the poll tax bills were pushed up.
Under the Government's proposals, the bills for average families will also be higher than they need be because of another good old poll tax principle- -unfairness. The valuation process and the artificial compression of the valuation bands have many unfortunate consequences, not least for families in the south and the south-east, many of whom will find that they are paying at or near the top level although they live in perfectly ordinary houses.
We shall want to explore those problems with Conservative Members, but when they come to consider banding, they might do well to remember the Prime Minister's statement to the Financial Times on 27 November 1990 just before he became Prime Minister, when he said, "Banding does not work." Does he still hold to that view? Do Conservative Members? Does the Secretary of State? Or is this, like so much else, just so much water under the bridge, to be swept away in the panic to do something, anything, as long as it is not the poll tax?
The real unfairness arises because, as with the poll tax, the best-off people are to be allowed to duck out of paying their proper and fair share. Under the Government's proposals, the ratio of property values in the top band and
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the bottom band is 8 : 1--in the real world it is, of course, much greater--yet the ratio of the highest bills to the lowest bills is only 3 : 1. The result of excusing the best-off is that bills for the rest of us are necessarily higher.Mr. Kenneth Hind (Lancashire, West) : Under the hon. Gentleman's proposals, will he maintain the proportion of public expenditure now covered by VAT? Can we therefore say that there will be no change in VAT rates if his system, as opposed to the council tax, is introduced?
Mr. Gould : If the hon. Gentleman had followed these matters at all closely, he would have known that we said exactly that in the debates on the Budget.
We can test the fairness of the council tax by looking at the bill that the Secretary of State himself will face. The Secretary of State is a millionaire. He lives in an expensive house in the heart of London. His bill will be just £273--£100 less than the bill for the lowest value property in Langbaurgh. How can that be fair? I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State defend that concept of fairness.
For all those reasons--administrative costs will be high, collection levels will be low and average bills will have to compensate for the special help given to the wealthy--the council tax bills will be higher than fair rates bills would have been. On average, they will be £67 higher.
The Government's figures--let us for the moment assume that they have an accuracy which the Government's abysmal record on predicting poll tax bills certainly does not justify--show that average council tax bills this year in Langbaurgh would have been £470 and in Middlesbrough £447-- £170 and £153 respectively higher than the equivalent fair rates bills. Those figures--the £170 and the £153--represent the surcharge that Langbaurgh families will have to pay for the continued life of the Tory Government. What is true of Langbaurgh is true of the rest of the country.
The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo) : Do I take it from what the hon. Gentleman just said thathe now has figures for every local authority under his proposals? I do not believe that we have seen them before. Will the hon. Gentleman please lay them on the table?
Mr. Gould : The hon. Gentleman may remember that the chairman of the Tory party professed to be gobsmacked when we produced precisely those figures. There is perhaps a little mystery in these matters. It is now clear that the chairman was gobsmacked because he saw the figures which we produced. It is clear that the Minister of State has remained ungobsmacked because he has resolutely refused to look at the figures which we produced. I shall gladly send him a copy.
Mr. Portillo : What the hon. Gentleman has produced is a meaningless average figure for Great Britain. He has never produced figures for every local authority. That is what we now wish to see.
Mr. Gould : We are beginning to unravel part of the continuing mystery of why the poll tax went so badly wrong and why the new poll tax will also go so wrong. It is because we are confronted by a bunch of ignoramuses who do not do their homework. They do not keep up to date and do not keep abreast of the facts which are put before them. I shall gladly send to the Minister the figures
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which we produced--I think, from memory, at the beginning of April--and which had such an immediate impact on his senior colleague and an even more gratifying impact on the electorate, who voted in huge numbers up and down the country for Labour candidates. We are promised in the Queen's Speech a further local government Bill. At first sight, this offers much more promising ground. It contains some proposals that we accept--indeed, some that we think do not go far enough. We are keen, for example, to ensure that local authorities should make a public response to auditors' reports. Our own "Quality Street" proposals recommend that councils should publish information about standards to be met and their performance in meeting those standards. We shall want to avoid some of the pitfalls of what seems to be a muddled approach by the Government to those questions. For example, we shall table an amendment which would require councils to issue customer contracts of the type pioneered by Labour councils. We have no intention of letting local government off the quality hook.The disappointment of the Bill is the way in which it has ignored, on the issue of local government structure, the possibility of proceeding by consensus. We favour a local government commission. We want to see flexibility and sensitivity to local needs. But we shall hope to convince the Government--indeed, it is essential that we do so--that a piecemeal, long, drawn-out process which is manifestly open to political gerrymandering and is certain to lead to further confusion is not the best way to proceed.
What we need from the Gracious Speech was an apology for the poll tax and a guarantee to put matters right. Instead, we have an apology of a Bill--the typical work of a Secretary of State who is happier making the airy gesture than doing the hard work. The Bill is hastily prepared, it will be rushed through, it takes enormous risks, it will be unfair, it will threaten civil liberties, it will put local councils under intolerable pressure--yet even then, it will not end the poll tax by 1993. When and if it should replace the poll tax, it will simply reproduce the most objectionable features, the unfairness and the confusion of its hated predecessor.
The new poll tax is a fitting epitaph for a Government who do not know how to say sorry, for a Government who are desperate to run for cover, and for a Government who have run out of ideas and out of time. We and the British people will put the Government and their new poll tax out of their misery as soon as they give us the chance. 5.20 pm
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine) : My hon. Friend the Minister made the point that when the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) rose to speak in this debate on the Gracious Speech, on the vital topic of local government, there were only 10 Labour Members to follow him over the top on such a critical issue. Even when the Labour party Whips toured the Corridors of the Palace of Westminster, all they could drag into the Chamber was about 28 people. The single group of people who have a vested interest in keeping the poll tax on the statute book were gathered together to listen to the tragic case that we have heard this afternoon.
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The Gracious Speech covers some of the most far-ranging reforms of local government with which we have had to deal in the House for many a long year. It covers a new regime for local government finance and proposals to set up a commission to consider the boundaries of local government. It includes proposals to extend competitive tendering to a wider range of areas. It deals with the scandal of Labour councillors voting for high budgets and then refusing to pay their fair share of them.The Gracious Speech is set against the background of the Government entering into a wide-ranging partnership with local government through city challenge and competitive housing investment programmes. We are achieving standards in local government that have never been seriously considered by the Labour party, yet all that we have is a weary parade of inaccurate stories about the poll tax from the hon. Member for Dagenham. We are determined to replace the poll tax at the earliest possible moment, but the Labour party will use every device that it knows to keep it on the statute book.
I can tell the House why the Labour party wants the poll tax to remain on the statute book : it sees it as the only argument that it has left with which to try to fight a general election. If anything was revealed to me this afternoon, it was that the Labour party has no policies to deal with local government. It has no credible alternative for financing local government. It wants to use the poll tax to hide the high levels of extravagant expenditure in which Labour councils indulge.
Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East) rose--
Mr. Heseltine : I give way to the arch-exponent of that policy.
Mr. Nellist : Can the Secretary of State explain why schedules 3, 4 and 8 of the council tax Bill provide exactly the same enforcement procedures as apply under the poll tax? Four years ago, the Government abolished imprisonment for debt under the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, yet the council tax maintains imprisonment as a penalty in England and Wales. Why the difference? Why keep such medieval barbarity?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one third of the 90 people who served a term of imprisonment in England and Wales were caught by the 20 per cent. rule--30 unemployed people and three on invalidity benefit? Will that happen under the council tax?
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Gentleman knows that people on the 20 per cent. benefit level were compensated for what they were expected to hand over to the local authority. The 20 per cent. arrangement will not apply to the council tax. The issue for the hon. Gentleman is simple. We were elected to the House to pass laws and to keep within the law of the land. The hon. Gentleman consistently undermines the credibility of the democratic process by refusing to pay legally raised bills, which he then foists on his constituents.
If that is the voice of the Labour party, I challenge its leader to say whether that is the message that he wants spread from one end of the country to the other. His supporters are flouting the law. Is that what the leader of the Labour party wants? [Interruption.] As the right hon.
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Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) will not speak for himself, I give way once more to the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist).Mr. Nellist : I shall be brief, in deference to my hon. Friends who also wish to speak. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, since the introduction of the poll tax, every month and on time I have paid a uniform business rate that is five times the level of the personal poll tax in Coventry? Every month, on time, I have paid my national income tax. My refusal to pay the poll tax will be maintained until the Government introduce in England and Wales what they have already introduced in Scotland--the removal of the barbaric practice of putting pensioners, the unemployed and others in prison for the crime of being poor.
Mr. Heseltine : It is a simple matter. Does the leader of the Labour party think that a Back Bencher has the right to defy a law that was passed by a majority in both Houses? Is that a sign of what Labour, if it were in power, would advocate to the country? I happen to believe that the right hon. Gentleman does not support the views of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East. It is an open secret. I cannot understand why he does not have the guts to stand up in the House and say so.
Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield) : The Secretary of State is talking about the Conservative Government bringing in laws and obeying them. What about the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley)? How many times did he break the law? The Secretary of State should get up and tell me that.
Mr. Heseltine : The issue with which the hon. Gentleman must deal is simple. Does he think that he should pay the community charge in his constituency while his hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East does not pay it in his ? Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to defend his hon. Friend's position ? That is the question and it is one with which the hon. Member for Dagenham did not deal during his speech.
Mr. Thomas Graham (Renfrew, West and Inverclyde) : The Secretary of State referred to breaking the law. Is he aware that many Conservatives are telling people to break the law and trade on Sundays ? The Tory party gets money from people who recommend breaking the law on Sunday trading.
Mr. Heseltine : I have no hesitation in saying that the law must stand. I defy the hon. Gentleman to say that those who represent the Conservative party in the House are inciting people to break the law.
The issue is simple : it is whether right hon. and hon. Members have a right to take part in a democratic process and then ignore--indeed, frustrate--the conclusions of that process. That is the road to anarchy and it is indefensible. It is one of the ingredients in the legislation with which we shall be dealing and I will want to know whether the Labour party will resist that, as it intends to resist so much of what we are trying to do. We have made it absolutely clear that the poll tax has to go at the earliest possible opportunity. The interesting point is that, every time we try to take positive action to bring about the end of the poll tax, it is the Labour party that hawks itself round the country saying that it cannot be done. It is
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trying to undermine the credibility of what we are trying to achieve because it has a vested interest in doing precisely that. The fact is that it will be done. We are going to do it, and we shall do it by April 1993.Very soon, on Second Reading, we shall have the chance to consider our proposals. They will be exhaustively considered during the usual procedures of the House. The ideas that we have put forward are now clearly understood. There will be a property-based valuation which will broadly reflect the circumstances of the people living in those properties. There will be an eight-band system ranging between a payment of one to three depending on the valuations of the properties.
Mr. Adley : My right hon. Friend will know that, as one who consistently voted against the poll tax, I welcome the Government's commitment to replace the real unfairness of the poll tax and many of the perceived unfairnesses of the previous rates system with the new proposals. However, does he agree that the hundreds of thousands of people who live in mobile homes do not enjoy the sort of property values which equate with the bandings that he has produced? Will he at least say that he is prepared to consider a separate band for people living in mobile homes who really have only the value of the pitch on which they live to represent the value of their properties?
Mr. Heseltine : I know that my hon. Friend has a particular interest in this. All these matters must be fully ventilated in Committee. I do not want that to be taken as saying that we can help in one way or another, but it is important that we should deal with the details in Committee.
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : Will the Secretary of State give way?
The proposals involve issuing a bill on the assumption that a household is occupied by two people. Anybody on full income support will be entitled to a 100 per cent. rebate and there will be a discount for a single person amounting to 25 per cent. of the bill. As the House knows, we shall discount students, student nurses, people on the youth training scheme and apprentices. We shall introduce transitional arrangements in order to help people who face difficulties in moving from one system to another. In those ways, we have carefully designed a system that will be simpler to administer and cheaper to collect. It will undoubtedly be--and already is-- widely regarded as fair.
I come now to some of the specific points of the hon. Member for Dagenham. First, I ask him whether he is against banding. Is the concept of banding something with which he can agree? That is an important question, the answer to which I wish to establish in order to discover the differences between our carefully worked-out proposals and the detailed intensive work which is apparently being conducted behind closed doors by the Labour party. Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of or against banding? I think that the House will accept from me that he does not know the answer to that question. There is no answer to whether the Labour party is for banding or not.
I took the trouble to do a little research of my own and I discovered that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) has said that the Labour party had no objection in principle to valuation bands. It is interesting that, if one does one's research and reads with care the
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Municipal Journal, one can find out what the Labour party thinks. But if one asks the official Opposition spokesman, he does not know. Mr. Gould rose --Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) rose --
Mr. Heseltine : I give way to both hon. Members.
Mr. Gould : It is a matter for regret that the Secretary of State seems to suffer from the same weakness as the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities. The answer to that question, and I suspect the answer to almost any question that he may care to put to us, is provided clearly in the fair rates proposals which, as I said in answer to an earlier intervention, we published 15 months ago. It is the Secretary of State's own look-out if he is too lazy to read that document.
However, since we are on the question of banding and who believes in what, would the Secretary of State tell us whether he agrees with the Prime Minister's statement which I quoted, to the effect that banding does not work? Does he agree with that or not?
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Gentleman knows full well that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister supports the proposals that we have made, so he does agree with them. That is the answer to the question. But let me be frank with the House. I want to find out what the Labour party believes in. That is why I stood at the Dispatch Box a year ago and asked the Opposition to come and talk to us. We gave them a chance to consult, to explain. We might even have gone further. They might have helped us to design the proposals. We could not find the answers in the document "Fair Rates". The document is so vague, almost vacuous, that it contains nothing that would enable anybody to draft any legislation. We asked the Opposition to come and talk, but they would not. Now we ask them about banding and the hon. Gentleman obviously does not know. I accept that his No. 2 does know.
We have established that the only real substance against the banding argument is that the Opposition want to put the bands up higher into the valuation range. That is completely consistent with their policy of going back to the rates. One of the only principles left in Labour's financial proposals for local government is an envy tax. They will not raise any money by that, but they want to cane the rich. Having taken 59p in the pound off them in income tax, they want to milk them in another way by introducing more complicated ways of raising more money, and that is in addition to what they intend to do to small businesses in local government, putting the uniform business rate back under the control of Labour authorities. That is a chilling thought to anyone who happens to be living near a Labour-controlled authority. Sadly, there are too many of them--
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : Yes, Lancashire.
Mr. Heseltine : --not just in Lancashire. They now see that there will be higher bands to raise more money from the rich and 59p in the pound in income tax, and that British businesses will be milked for more money for
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Labour extravagance. That is where we are beginning to head in Labour's alternative proposals for local government finance. Let us move on to the figures. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) has an immense number of virtues and very few weaknesses, one of which is not laziness ; it is not a lack of diligence for his task. Nobody knows more about the matter than he does-- although, compared with the hon. Member for Dagenham, that is not saying very much. It is known that he knows. The hon. Gentleman says that my hon. Friend has not checked up, but my hon. Friend was right. The hon. Gentleman produced a document which was relevant to the first year of Labour's proposals if we went back to the rates.Mr. Gould : I was intrigued and amused, as was the whole House, by the Secretary of State's assertion that his ministerial colleague knew and that it was known that he knew. Has the right hon. Gentleman checked that he knows?
Mr. Heseltine : Yes. I spend my life trying to keep up with my hon. Friend, and it is one of the races that I am losing. But he is younger than I am.
Let me continue with the delicate subject of Labour's figures. My hon. Friend has done his homework and he knows, as I know, that the only figures that the Labour party has produced are on the assumption of a return to the rates.
I return to the Municipal Journal of 25 October and I shall tell the House how the fair rates proposals are going to be valued. This is what it says :
"They have suggested a mixture of capital values, rebuilding costs, repair costs, and rental values."
Before anyone thinks that that is a finite definition of the process by which they have worked out all these figures, and before we get carried away and pinned down into thinking that this is all that accurate, step forward the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who told the conference :
"We are open to persuasion and to ideas."
That was not 15 months ago or even 15 days ago. It was last week that the hon. Gentleman was saying all that.
Can anyone tell the House how one can pin down the figures that they claim to have published if one has not made up the basis of valuation upon which one is going to do it? Will either the hon. Member for Dagenham or the hon. Member for Brightside, or any Labour Member, intervene at this stage, so that we can understand their logic? [Interruption.] Not from a sitting position--if the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene, he should get off his butt and do it.
Mr. Gould : The Secretary of State is making a valiant attempt to get himself ungobsmacked, but in taking this debate back seven months to a point where we comprehensively established our position to the great discomfort of the Government, the right hon. Gentleman will recall that we enjoyed the support of independent experts, not least the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, for the calculations that we made.
Mr. Heseltine : I know that Labour have been consulting CIPFA, so please can we have the benefit of
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that consultation? Will Labour Members explain how the system will work? Of course, we all know that there are no answers to those questions. There is no conceivable way in which anybody could work out what proportion of what value was about building costs, capital values, rental costs or anything else, because they do not have those figures. Why? They are terrified that they might actually be questioned about the realities of their proposal.What has Labour done in its fair rates document ? Fair rates ? I see that the Leader of the Opposition has gone. Quite rightly, he has abandoned ship, and the reason why he has gone is that he could see where I was coming to in my speech.
The leader of the Labour party was describing rates as the unfairest tax that he had ever come across. What is Labour's policy but to go back to them ; not for ever, but just for one putative year, while they try to work out some of the details that they have not begun to approach up until now.
Let us move on to the most interesting and constructive intervention in this debate. Labour's proposals--when it has worked them out, costed them, and designed them--will have one absolutely inviolate principle built into them ; that local Labour parties can spend and spend and spend as though there is no tomorrow, and in that way there probably will not be a tomorrow. We have it on the record--no capping and no restraints.
The interesting thing about the departure of the leader of the Labour party is that the shadow Chancellor never came at all and nor, to the best of my knowledge, did the shadow Chief Secretary. I think that the Whips had better go and get them, because we have had another vast extravaganza this afternoon--uncontrolled local authority expenditure, all on the public sector, with no control whatsoever. Mr. Gould rose--
Mr. Blunkett rose--[Laughter.]
Mr. Gould : It is rather unfortunate if Conservative Members are to exploit my hon. Friend's obvious difficulties.
As the Secretary of State is talking about unbridled extravagance as a consequence of not having any capping powers, does he remember his very definite espousal of exactly that position in the article which, from memory, he published in The Times on 9 April 1990? Does he remember his condemnation of any power of universal capping and the very forceful and persuasive grounds on which he made that condemnation? Why has he departed from that principle, or is it another example of the Government, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister standing on their respective heads?
Mr. Heseltine : It is very simple. We reduced the community charge by £140 per person, and we are determined that it stays for the benefit of the people and is not gobbled up by extravagant local authorities under Labour control. How much worse it would be if the capping regime were taken off, to make it even more certain. I have nothing but respect for the hon. Member for Brightside. He actually understands these matters and he can add up. His figures make sense--whereas I do not think that the hon. Member for Dagenham can add up. At least, I did not think that he could add up until I heard him
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doing a broadcast about his place in the shadow Cabinet, when he was obviously able to add up to determine exactly where he had come. The hon. Gentleman's figuring ability is focused, but not on local government finance.I have only one final point that I want to draw to the attention of the House.--[ Hon. Members :-- "More."] No, one final point, on the Bill that the House will consider very shortly. It is always complex to design a local government tax and no taxes will ever be popular, so there must be a proper consideration. However, we should all be able to unite in that if the proposals, as the House and another place determine them, pass into law. They will become the law of the land. That is why we were elected to come here. That is why we do not fight it out on the barricades. That is why we do not behave as badly in this country as others with less sophisticated parliamentary systems do. We have learnt.
Mr. Gould : What about a speech?
Mr. Heseltine : The hon. Gentleman asks, "What about a speech?" What about a principle? What I want to know is very simple. When we get to that part of the legislation which takes away from Labour councillors who do not pay their bills the right to vote on matters that affect the budgets of their councils, will Labour vote against us or will it not?
Mr. Gould : Of course we will.
Mr. Heseltine : I heard the answer, even though it was from a sedentary position--"Of course we will vote against."
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