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Madam Deputy Speaker : It is up to the Minister whether or not he reads it. It is not a point of order for the Chair.
Mr. Portillo : I was just about to come to the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), who signed the statement, so he will be able to read it out himself. Other hon. Members who signed were the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) and Mr. Eric Heffer, the hon. Members for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbott), for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas)-- he is now in his place--for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry), for Leyton, for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay) and Mr. Pat Wall, the hon. Members for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo)--also in her place-- for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), for Bow and Poplar (Ms. Gordon) and for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell).
6 pm
That is not all--three Scottish Labour Members of Parliament declared that they would not pay the community charge when they launched the Committee of 100 to campaign against the community charge in Scotland. They were the hon. Members for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion), for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey).
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun yesterday said, extraordinarily, that he had not paid himself but that he had not urged anyone else not to pay. Do the Opposition know nothing about the example that legislators set? Do they know nothing about the effect that people who are sent to Westminster to make laws may have on their constituents if they say that they will not pay taxes that have been passed in the House?
We have seen an extraordinary display from the Opposition today. They want to forget their past. They say that the 20 per cent. contribution should be abolished because it is difficult to collect. They want to forget that they made it difficult to collect the 20 per cent. contributions because they urged people not to pay the tax, did not pay it themselves and set a terrible example. It is not for that reason that I ask the House to reject the amendment, but for the arguments that I have outlined. When hon. Members vote tonight they will bear in mind the heavy guilt felt by the Opposition.
Mr. Maxton : I have heard the Second Reading speeches from members of the Government Front Bench and I have sat through the Committee stage waiting to hear one Minister or one Conservative hon. Member say that they were wrong about the poll tax. I have waited for them to show some humility for having imposed the tax on the people of Scotland and then on the people of England and Wales and to apologise for the fact that they got it dramatically wrong. But what do we get? We have heard yet another arrogant speech from the Minister of State in which he tried to justify the unjustifiable.
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Having listened carefully to the Minister and to all the Conservative hon. Members who have spoken, I do not understand why they are getting rid of the poll tax. All of them argued in favour of its retention. That is what they have been doing, so why on earth will the hon. Members for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker)--who is not here--and the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) vote for the Third Reading of a Bill to abolish the poll tax? The hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross may not be aware that clause 100 is entitled "Abolition of community charges". He will vote for the Bill tonight despite the speech that he made earlier.It is clear that the Government are getting rid of the poll tax not because they no longer believe in it, but because they know that it is an electoral disaster which will bring them down. It will remain an electoral disaster until the general election. It is returning to prominence and the Government will suffer as a result.
If the Government are not prepared to accept any of the sound practical and principled reasons given by the Liberal Democrats and by Labour--
Mr. Jimmy Dunnachie (Glasgow, Pollok) rose--
Mr. Maxton : Let me finish this point. If they are not prepared to accept our arguments, I shall offer the electoral argument. Their electoral chances will improve if they can show that they are doing something about the poll tax before the election. The one thing that they can do about the poll tax before the election is to abolish the 20 per cent. minimum payment on 1 April 1992 instead of leaving it until 1993. That is the one thing that they can do to improve their electoral chances, but they are not prepared to do it.
The truth is that the Government want to hang on to every last vestige of the poll tax for as long as possible. Tonight and during all the debates on the 20 per cent. minimum payment and on the council tax we have witnessed the struggle in the Tory party between those who want to get rid of the poll tax completely and those who want to keep it. As a result, the Government have come up with a half-baked compromise which satisfies neither element and which will create almost as big a chaotic mess as the poll tax did.
The Minister said that the principle behind the 20 per cent. payment was that everyone should pay something. However, the 20 per cent. minimum payment was first introduced not for the poll tax but for the old rating system. When it was introduced the Bill covering England and Wales had not yet been introduced into the House. Therefore, we can assume only that its introduction on 1 April 1988 was a wholly cynical way of trying to show that the numbers who would benefit from the introduction of the poll tax would be greater than would otherwise have been the case.
The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), looks rather puzzled, so I shall explain. The Government introduced the minimum payment under the rating system on 1 April 1988. All single people had to pay 20 per cent. of the rates which for, say, a council in Castlemilk in my constituency were about £450 ; so a single person would have had to pay £90 a year. That would have applied to any single person--to a widow, a pensioner or a single parent. From 1 April 1989 when the poll tax was introduced that person had to
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pay only £50 instead of the £90. Suddenly, the Government could claim that such people were beneficiaries under the poll tax. It was a wholly cynical exercise in statistical manoeuvring to justify the system.I cannot use the word that I want to describe the arguments that I have heard from Conservative hon. Members but it is blatantly obvious--
Mr. Maxton : My hon. Friend suggests "skulduggery"--I am not sure whether that is a parliamentary term but it is good enough. The Government imposed the poll tax which meant that the poorest people just outside the rebate system paid exactly the same as a millionaire and that everyone paid a minimum amount. They now intend to retain the 20 per cent., but they are happy about the fact that the Bill will give a 25 per cent. discount to every single person, whatever his income. They are happy to ensure that the maximum amount paid by the wealthiest person will be only three times that paid by those just outside the rebate system, but they are not prepared to get rid of a 20 per cent. minimum payment for the poorest in society. I am sure that most people welcomed the £140 a year reduction because everyone welcomes a cut in taxes, but, as I suggested to the Minister, if instead of giving that reduction they had given only £126 a year, the remaining £14--or 10 per cent.--could have been used to get rid of the 20 per cent. minimum payment not on 1 April 1992, as is now suggested, but on 1 April 1991. That would have been the sensible and humane thing to do. The 20 per cent. payment was unfair from the beginning and it should never have been imposed. The Government now have an opportunity to get rid of it if only they would act with some humanity for once.
It is an impractical tax. Above all else, that has brought it into disrepute. The tax has brought the whole system into disrepute because the level of non-payment has not been due to the non-payment campaigns of Labour Members or of the SNP, but to the fact that the vast majority of people to whom the 20 per cent. applied simply could not afford to pay it.
The note that I have just received from the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy), does not say, "Sit down." It says, "Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Will you join me for a drink which I am prepared to pay for?" Anyone who believes that will believe anything.
The system is unworkable. The vast majority of those who have not paid the tax are those on rebates and especially those who are on the 20 per cent. minimum payment. Some 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. of those who have not paid the tax in Scotland are either on the minimum 20 per cent. payment or are on rebates. The non-payment campaign is not the cause. I opposed the principle of the campaign, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) enunciated last night. I also believe that it has always been a dangerous diversion away from the truth about the 20 per cent. minimum payment and non-payment, which is that people simply could not afford to pay. It has given Conservative Members the constant excuse to attack the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas), the SNP and some of my hon. Friends. The poll tax remained in place for six months longer than it should have simply
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because the Government were able to attack those people and had an excuse for keeping the poll tax on the statute book. It would otherwise have collapsed and gone.In Scotland, local authorities have now issued 3 million summonses for poll tax debt. The vast majority of them have been issued against the very poorest in our society. It is in itself an obscenity that we are hitting the widows, the single parents and the old-age pensioners. To tax such people makes the tax uncollectable and a waste of time.
Conservative Members suggest that local authorities could get the money deducted directly from income support. In the vast majority of cases in which that has been tried the social security departments have turned down the application because most people who have not paid already have deductions, which means that nothing more can be deducted. How do the local authorities get the tax?
I remember that during the passage of the Abolition of Domestic Rates, etc. (Scotland) Bill I said that we should finish up with warehouses full of Walkman radios which had belonged to youngsters who could not afford to pay the tax. That is what we are coming to. It is not a matter of whether local authorities try to collect the tax. The fact is that one cannot get money from people who do not have it. Local authorities have to try to get the money through the warrant sale and poinding procedure. To try to do that for 3 million people is impossible. We do not have the sheriff officers to do so and--
Mr. Bill Walker : It would be helpful for the hon. Gentleman to tell the House what the adult population of Scotland is today. 6.15 pm
Mr. Maxton : I know the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. Does he deny that there are 3 million warrants? I do not deny that some people have received more than one warrant for debt because the tax has been in existence for three years. The point is that the warrants have to be collected individually. If someone settles a warrant for 1989-90, he may still have a warrant outstanding for 1990-91 and another outstanding for 1991-92. That does not negate my argument that 3 million warrants are outstanding.
It is impossible to collect debts from people who do not have the money to pay and who have few goods which, under the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, can be taken from them. The hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross will know that the Debtors (Scotland) Act, which should have abolished warrant sales altogether, went only halfway down that road. It took out of the warrant sale procedure many domestic goods. As a result, there are few things, especially in a poor household, which the sheriff officers can poind and take away for sale. That is why I used the example of the Walkman. Often it is the only thing a young unemployed man or woman has which a sheriff officer could collect. What would one get for a second-hand Walkman? A fiver or £10 does not pay off the debt and is far less than the cost of trying to collect the money.
The Government are desperately trying to cling to the last remnants of the poll tax and especially to the one part of the tax which, above all, has been unfair and has made it unworkable--the 20 per cent. minimum payment. The Government have now deserted the principle that everyone should pay something towards local government
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finance. If they had any humanity left, they would get rid of the tax now. They would accept our amendment or at least admit the principle of it and then table amendments in the other place. Unfortunately, they do not have the humility or the guts to do that. They do not have the guts to stand by their principles, as is shown by the 20 per cent. minimum payment, nor do they have the guts to get rid of that payment on 1 April 1992. The whole problem is-- [Interruption.] Conservative Members should know that I make my speeches in my own way without instructions from anybody. The Government could have got rid of the poll tax itself on 1 April 1992 if they had taken our advice. That would have been the humane thing to do. Now they have an opportunity at least to get rid of the most obnoxious part--the 20 per cent. minimum payment--on 1 April 1992. If Ministers cannot bring themselves to do that, Conservative Members who urged the Government to get rid of the poll tax should join me and my hon. Friends in the Lobby to vote for the amendment, which aims to get rid of the 20 per cent. minimum payment now.Question put, That the amendment be made :--
The House divided : Ayes 235, Noes 320.
Division No. 29] [6.18 pm
AYES
Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)
Allen, Graham
Alton, David
Anderson, Donald
Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Armstrong, Hilary
Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
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
Boyes, Roland
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)
Carr, Michael
Cartwright, John
Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Clelland, David
Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Cohen, Harry
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)
Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Corbett, Robin
Corbyn, Jeremy
Cousins, Jim
Cox, Tom
Crowther, Stan
Cryer, Bob
Cummings, John
Cunliffe, Lawrence
Cunningham, Dr John
Dalyell, Tam
Darling, Alistair
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)
Dewar, Donald
Dixon, Don
Dobson, Frank
Douglas, Dick
Duffy, Sir A. E. P.
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth
Eadie, Alexander
Eastham, Ken
Edwards, Huw
Enright, Derek
Evans, John (St Helens N)
Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)
Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Fatchett, Derek
Faulds, Andrew
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)
Fisher, Mark
Flannery, Martin
Flynn, Paul
Foster, Derek
Foulkes, George
Fraser, John
Fyfe, Maria
Galbraith, Sam
Galloway, George
Garrett, John (Norwich South)
Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)
George, Bruce
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Godman, Dr Norman A.
Golding, Mrs Llin
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