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Mr. Bowis : We were all moved when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) told us about his life under socialism in Scotland, with no hot and cold running water, having to deal with his own sewage--or whatever it was that he did--begging for a crust of bread at the door of his little rural cottage and being forced by his nanny to eat his rice pudding. He was trying to pour some oil on the Opposition's troubled waters in Scotland. In so doing, his learned advice came down slightly in favour of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) rather than the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas). I want to redress that balance slightly, because I believe that the hon. Member for Garscadden has an honourable record in terms of his policy on the issue. I believe that he is wrong, but he is sincere and consistent.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Bennett) : I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas), who is the prospective Scottish National party candiate for Glasgow, Garscadden. I can understand his confusion.
Mr. Bowis : My hon. Friend is right.
In his erstwhile guise, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West and I debated the community charge at Cambridge university in the days when we all believed that the community charge was the greatest thing since neeps
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and tatties. I must tell Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe), who raised the matter earlier, that many of us believe that the community charge is a good system. My borough of Wandsworth has shown that the system could have worked.Wandsworth has a zero charge this year, and we have just announced a zero charge for the coming year. Before Opposition Members point it out, that is on the basis of Government grant that is one third less than in neighbouring inner-London Labour boroughs which are charging £400, £500 or £600. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West is right to question the sincerity of some Labour party representatives who have challenged him today.
6.15 pm
I am with the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West when he stands up for the people who cannot pay. However, he should recall that we have a rebate system designed to look after those who cannot pay. That system works only if we have a system of local government in which responsible local authorities set responsible levels of community charge. That has always been the case. If local authorities do not set such levels of community charge, the benefit and rebate system is inadequate to look after the people about whom the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West is concerned.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West also referred to other members of the public who refused to pay the tax when they were capable of paying it. Among those people were Labour Members, Labour councillors and Labour party officials who campaigned around the country for non-payment. They could pay, but they would not. The hon. Member for Garscadden referred to the guilt by association of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West in respect of his meetings with Militant representatives. However, if I can believe my own ears, it seems, from the expulsions from the Labour party as a result of Militant connections, that everyone in the Labour party who has appeared on a platform with Militant representatives is at risk. Guilt by association works two ways. It may work with regard to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West being on a platform with a Militant spokesman. However, it also works with the Labour party failing to discipline its own members who campaigned against payment of the tax. It is their surcharge that people throughout England, Scotland and Wales are having to pay.
Mrs. Ray Michie : As the hon. Gentleman knows, my party has never been in favour of a "can pay, won't pay" campaign. However, he should be careful about whom he is accusing of not paying when they could pay. There are Conservative councillors who have not paid, but who could pay.
Mr. Bowis : I was referring to hon. Members. I know of no Conservative Member who has not paid. If there is one, the hon. Lady should name him or her now. If Conservative councillors have refused to pay, I condemn them as utterly as I condemn the Labour councillors who have not paid.
As the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) has raised her party's head above the parapet, she should
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be careful about the cost that she is seeking to impose on the people of this country. Her leader estimated during the Ribble Valley by-election that the average local income tax would be £600.Mr. Tom Clarke (Monklands, West) : I hope that the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) will not be offended when I say that life in Bargeddie and Bellshill must be very different from life in Battersea. I can find no support for the Government's proposals, although I can see much logic in new clause 1 and much support for the principles that it enshrines.
New clause 1(2)(c) refers to
"the levels of services provided by local authorities". Given that we have a very confused system of local government finance, with central Government's contribution, a much smaller amount raised from local revenue and enormous difficulties because of the previous form of taxation that the Government attempted to introduce and the new one that they introduce in this Bill, local authorities far too often, in department after department, instead of dealing with the big issues of education, leisure and recreation and the quality of life in their districts, have to devote a great deal of time to collection problems and cannot give priority to essential services.
I greatly regret the unacceptable problems that have been imposed on social work departments in Scotland, especially when poverty is on the increase, when the national health service is under attack, and when local authorities are expected to deal with community care problems to which they simply do not have the resources to enable them to respond. To its credit, in recent weeks, the Glasgow Evening Times has been exposing the scandal of mentally ill and mentally handicapped people being sent to prison. Every social work department in Scotland wants to address those problems but they cannot do so because resources are not available.
I welcome new clause 1, with its reference to genuine consultation not only with COSLA but with organisations such as citizens advice bureaux. If we have genuine consultation, such scandals and the failure to respond to people's needs will be addressed. Local authorities can see poverty before their very eyes. With genuine consultation, they will be able to cope. If we involve the consumer in the widest possible sense and restore the democratic role of local government in Scotland to its rightful place, we will do a great service to democracy. For that reason, I am delighted to support new clause 1.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Bennett) : This has been an interesting debate, but it has had littlto do with the council tax.
Mr. Maxton : Why is not the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland replying ?
Mr. Bennett : I am replying to the debate because this is a United Kingdom Parliament and, as the new clauses are about England, Scotland and Wales, a Welsh Office Minister is perfectly entitled to reply.
It has been an interesting debate, but there has been little talk by Opposition Members about the council tax. The debate has been about the community charge. It has been a negative debate on the part of the Opposition. They have looked backward rather than forward. I have no hesitation in advising the House to reject the amendment and the new clauses.
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The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) spent most of his time having a debate with the Scottish National party about who was responsible for what in Scotland in terms of advising people not to pay the community charge. I shall refer to that matter in a minute. I shall deal with the two or three points of substance that arose in respect of the parts of the Bill that we are discussing. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) argued that, in Scotland, England and Wales next year, the Liberal party would like to see the abolition of all local taxation and the imposition of a national income tax for one year only. I find that very strange, because Liberal Democrat Members spent the whole time in Committee arguing that local councils should raise more of their own resources from local taxpayers rather than from national taxpayers. Seeing that there might be a little bit of an electoral advantage with a general election coming, the Liberal party is prepared to stand principle upon its head and argue the exactly opposite case on the Floor of the House.The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute spoke also about the cost of implementation of the new council tax. The Government have accepted the estimates made by the CSL Group Ltd. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales provided an extra £6 million over the total for aggregate external finance for 1992-93, which was announced in July, to meet the estimated revenue costs of local authorities of bringing in the new council tax. The same has been done in England, where my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), the Secretary of State for the Environment, has put aside £86 million. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has provided a further £10 million to enhance allocations in 1992-93. I do not think that the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute can argue that local authorities have not received generous extra financial support in the coming financial year for their implementation of the council tax. The hon. Lady spoke also about the local income tax. We had a long debate in Standing Committee on that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) will speak on that matter in a later debate when we discuss Liberal amendments on the local income tax.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) spoke about Labour's amendments. She said that the Labour party had not had an opportunity in Standing Committee to debate its point of view in full. It is worth pointing out just what happened in Standing Committee. On clause 6, for instance, we had seven and a half hours of debate. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) admitted that he spoke only because the Labour Whip asked him to speak in order to prolong the debate. We had another seven and a half hours of debate on clause 11. On clause 22, we had a two- hour debate, in which the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) spoke at great length. On clause 32, we had three and three quarter hours of debate, and on clause 53 we had a four-hour debate.
In Committee, Labour Members did not allocate time between the amendments that they wanted to debate. They time-wasted and they spoke at great length. If Labour Members have any cause for complaint, they should look at their own behaviour in Standing Committee. The hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) spent 12 minutes saying
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good morning to the Committee and telling us that it was his wife's birthday and that he had not been able to buy her a present. That was the level of debate time and again. We all felt sinking hearts when the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said, "I shall speak briefly," because we knew that that meant that a 40-minute speech was on its way.I do not believe for a minute that the hon. Member for Maryhill can complain that the Labour party did not get its views across in Committee. Labour Members had nearly 90 hours to do so. If they failed to get their points across, it was because of their own disorganisation.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas), who I understand is to stand at the next election as the SNP candidate for Glasgow, Garscadden, spoke at great length, but not one of his words was on the SNP amendment to new clause 27. It seemed strange that the hon. Gentleman did not have the confidence in his own amendment to speak to it at all.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) spoke in conciliatory and dulcet tones--unlike mine tonight-- about this complicated legislation. Any local government finance legislation is bound to be complicated. Someone once said--I think that it was Palmerston--on the Schleswig-Holstein question, that there were three people who understood Schleswig-Holstein : one was dead, one had gone mad, and he had forgotten. That is very true of local government finance as well. Although we have had to bring in a complicated piece of legislation, when we look at the rebate system, the discounts and the banding that we have put forward, it will be seen to be fair legislation which attempts to help all those who will be faced with local council tax.
Mr. Maxton : I wonder into which of those three categories the Minister puts himself in terms of the council tax. Is he dead, has he forgotten, or has he gone mad?
Mr. Bennett : That is a very witty intervention.
The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) spoke at great length on the community charge, but he did not address the council tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) spoke about the Labour party wasting Scottish local authorities' time in asking them to work out alternatives to the legislation. I agree that it would be better if local authorities ignored the Labour party's political posturing on the matter and got on with the job in hand, which is to prepare for the implementation of the council tax on 1 April 1993.
Dr. Godman : Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Bennett : I am sorry, I cannot give way. I have sat here since four minutes past four, waiting to reply. There is agreement between the Front Benches that there will be short replies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) made some interesting points. However, I wish to conclude my remarks by referring to the speech of the hon. Member for Garscadden.
The hon. Member for Garscadden became involved in a family squabble with the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West. It was a real family squabble between two sorts of pink socialists, arguing about who was right over the community charge. I listened with great care to the hon. Member for Garscadden expressing his great moral
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outrage about the SNP, waiting to hear him condemn those Labour Members who had said that they would not pay the community charge, but I heard not a word of condemnation from the hon. Gentleman about his colleagues.6.30 pm
The hon. Members for Maryhill and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) did not say, when they launched their Committee of 100 campaign in Scotland, that they would not pay the community charge themselves. Although they have spoken today about local government finance, they did not admit that they encouraged people not to pay the community charge. I wonder why there is so much hand-wringing among Opposition Members about that matter--
Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North) : This is terrible.
Mr. Bennett : What is terrible is the fact that Labour Members, who want to be law makers and to pass legislation in this House, break the law themselves. We should place that important fact on the record. I am appalled that Labour Members have said today that their constituents are suffering when they argued in public that people should not pay the community charge--
Mr. McKelvey : That is not true.
Mr. Bennett : If the hon. Gentleman believes that that is not true, I would welcome an intervention from him.
Mr. McKelvey : I thought that I had already explained the position, but perhaps the Minister was not present. I can show clearly and publicly-- it is on the front page of my local newspaper--that I said that I was taking a political stance, but I did not suggest that others did what I did because I knew that I would have to pay the surcharge and that others might not be able to do so. I regret the fact that those who brought people into the non-payment campaign are now simply washing their hands of the other people who are lumbered with the debt.
Mr. Bennett : If the hon. Gentleman thinks that he is taking a moral stance by saying that he will not pay his tax when other people will have to pay a surcharge to make up for the income that was lost because he would not pay, I can only say that that is a strange form of morality.
It is clear from our debate during the past two and a half hours that Labour Members do not want to discuss the council tax. They would rather go back to discussing the community charge. We are committed to abolishing the community charge and shall do so. The Bill will be passed. I ask the House to reject the new clause.
Mr. Gould : We have had a good and useful debate, but it was clearly not much enjoyed by Conservative Members. There are a number of signs of that. First, the Secretary of State for the Environment graced us with his presence for 10 minutes during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). The right hon. Gentleman then reached the limits of his patience, thus doubling the amount of time that he spent in Standing Committee. However, it was on the basis of that 10 minutes' observation that he apparently found it possible to criticise the Labour party for filibustering. His remarks
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on that subject were as ill-founded and unconvincing as those of the Under-Secretary of State for Wales a moment ago.The second sign that the Conservative party has not relished the debate was the presence on the Treasury Bench of that
Under-Secretary. I mean no disrespect to him--that is, no more disrespect than is normally his due--when I say that the fact that he was asked to reply to the debate was intended by the Government to signify that they did not much like the debate or attach much importance to it. That view is confirmed by the fact that not a single Conservative Back-Bencher was present at the beginning of the debate.
I am not surprised that Conservative Members wanted to slink away from the debate. They have guilty consciences--not just about the disastrous consequences of the poll tax, but also about their shameful record during that whole episode, when they allowed themselves to be dragooned through the Division Lobbies in support of the legislation and then, when the whistle was blown and they were told that they had to reverse direction, they all slunk off in that reverse direction.
The new clause and the report that it seeks to introduce are not only important but essential. We seek first to establish what went wrong, because what went wrong did enormous damage to local government, to individual and family budgets, to respect for the law and to civil rights. The poll tax was undoubtedly the worst mistake made by any Government in modern times.
The second purpose of the report is to establish who was responsible for making that mistake. Of course, Conservative Members now want to distance themselves from the whole catastrophe and to say that it was all the fault of their former leader, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), but half the present Cabinet were deeply implicated in the introduction of the poll tax. The Chairman of the Tory party, the current Secretary of State for Health, the current Home Secretary and even the Prime Minister himself were the guilty men. No wonder they do not want to be brought to the dock and made to face the charges.
Thirdly, and perhaps most constructively, we need a report to learn the lessons and to ensure that the mistakes are not repeated. The first of those lessons is that the poll tax was unacceptable because it was unfair. We no longer have to say that, because the Government's own excuse for abandoning the poll tax is that people could not be persuaded that it was fair. However, the same principle of unfairness is enshrined in the new council tax. The best-off will not pay their fair share. The scale of liability is to be compressed or dampened, so others will have to pick up the bill.
Another lesson is that the poll tax turned out to be too complicated and too costly, although its great virtue was supposed to be its simplicity. It was hugely complicated and expensive because it took enormous time and resources to trace all the people who moved. During the year, about 40 per cent. of those on one register moved off it and on to another when they changed address. In some parts of London, 60 per cent. of the register had to be changed during the year. The council tax is similarly complex. It will have all the problems of the poll tax, coupled with the new problem of being a totally untried property tax.
Another lesson is that the poll tax was utterly uncollectable. Again, it is not only the Opposition who say
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that. The Prime Minister himself has described the poll tax as "virtually uncollectable". That is why local authorities have had to issue 7.5 million summonses. No one should point the finger at individual local authorities as though all that was their fault, because it is a problem that faces the whole of local government. Local government is£1.5 billion short of the amount that it would have collected if the poll tax had been as collectable as the rates. The same mistakes are being repeated with the council tax. As I have said, another problem with the poll tax was the damage that it did to civil rights. About 1 million votes have gone missing. We must assume that 1 million people decided to trade in their vote to escape paying the poll tax. However, we are told yet again that local authorities will be encouraged to turn to the electoral register to establish liability for the new tax. What an incentive, yet again, for people to trade in their vote to escape their tax liability. That is not the right thing to do, and nobody would advise people to do it, but the Government have not learnt the lesson : that that is what people did under the poll tax and that that is what they will do under the council tax also.The poll tax was a nightmare for local government. It was supposed to improve accountability. Indeed, in its dying days, accountability was said to be its one remaining saving grace. But we now have universal capping, which is again being enshrined in the council tax legislation. That is another lesson that has not been learnt, and a mistake that will be repeated.
Finally, and perhaps in the long term the most harmful, there is the damage that the poll tax has done to the acceptability of the concept of one's legal obligation to pay local government taxation. Bad lessons have been learnt by so many people who have found it possible not to pay the poll tax. If we are not careful, those lessons will be carried over to the new council tax and to all other tax-paying obligations.
This has certainly been an uncomfortable debate for the Conservative party, and that discomfort has been more than justified. If they had any sense of shame, the Government would have shown it this evening and expressed remorse. Indeed, if the Conservative party in Parliament had been local councillors in local government, they would have been surcharged, bankrupted and driven from office. We cannot bankrupt them or surcharge them, but we shall drive them from office, and that is what the British people will want.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time :
The House divided : Ayes 218, Noes 350.
Division No. 26] [6.39 pm
AYES
Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)
Allen, Graham
Alton, David
Anderson, Donald
Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Armstrong, Hilary
Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Ashton, Joe
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)
Barron, Kevin
Battle, John
Beckett, Margaret
Beith, A. J.
Bellotti, David
Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)
Benton, Joseph
Bermingham, Gerald
Blair, Tony
Blunkett, David
Boateng, Paul
Bradley, Keith
Bray, Dr Jeremy
Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)
Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Caborn, Richard
Callaghan, Jim
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)
Campbell-Savours, D. N.
Canavan, Dennis
Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)
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