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5.15 pm
The LGA, optimistic to the last, is still talking about continuing discussions with the Government as to how the scheme will work, with a view to persuading the Government to drop or modify the scheme in future years. I wish it well, but on the basis of performance to date, I have to say, "Fat chance." It concludes by saying:
Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch):
It is a pleasure to participate in a debate opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford), who followed me as leader of Wandsworth council. It is appropriate that we should both be able to point out to the Minister the absurd fallacy of the percentages argument in relation to the weightwatcher. If a weightwatcher weighs 10 stone and increases his weight by 10 per cent., that is an increase of 1 stone. Has he done better or worse than someone of 20 stone who increases his weight by 1 stone, an increase of only 5 per cent? The Minister suggests that someone who is already 20 stone and increases his weight by 1 stone is doing better than someone who is 10 stone and increases his weight by 1 stone. That is absolute nonsense.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley referred to Wandsworth's 20-year record of achievement. It is appropriate to remind the House of the catalyst that gave the Conservatives in Wandsworth the opportunity to control the council. In its last year in office, the Labour party in Wandsworth moved a guillotine motion to restrict debate in the council chamber. There was such outrage in the borough at the fact that, in an authority of 55 councillors and aldermen, the Labour party had chosen to use the guillotine against 15 Conservatives in opposition that, a few months later, the Conservatives were swept into office. The Labour party lost and, as we know, it is still in opposition in Wandsworth more than 21 years later. Those of my hon. Friends who are concerned about the way in which the Labour Government have promoted the guillotine motion today may take some consolation from the fact that a guillotine gave Conservatives in Wandsworth the opportunity to ensure 20 years or more of successful Conservative control.
Wandsworth never had to resort to referendums because the councillors kept in touch with their electors. They listened and responded and provided quality core services at affordable prices.
Schedule 1, tucked away at the back of the Bill, is a provision of 15 pages which enables the Secretary of State to introduce what is not described as crude and universal capping. In my submission, instead of being crude, it is complex. Instead of being universal, it is arbitrary. Complex and arbitrary capping is even worse than crude and universal capping.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
Am I alone in thinking that crude capping was at least predictable? It was clear when the Secretary of State was going to cap, whereas I am mystified as to what the criteria will be under the schedule.
Mr. Chope:
My hon. Friend is right. The criteria seem to be that whatever the Minister decides goes. That is an arbitrary use of power; through the ages, dictators have always wanted to take such power to themselves and that is what the Government are taking to themselves in the Bill.
The Government are obsessed with second-guessing councils on whether they are responding to the wishes of the electorate. An experiment being carried out in Dorset is relevant to the proposal in new clause 6 that would prevent Governments from imposing a cap on a council that had carried out a referendum on its council tax proposals and had won the endorsement of its electors.
This year, there are extremely large council tax increases in Dorset. Dorset county council has chosen to increase the council tax by 7.9 per cent and the Dorset police authority is increasing its precept by 9.2 per cent.--the third highest amount among county police authorities. In part of my constituency--the East Dorset district council area--the consequence of those two decisions and the council tax imposed by the district council is that the average council tax payer in East Dorset will pay a massive £858 in the coming year. That will be the 11th highest council tax bill for householders anywhere in the country.
That is the consequence of having a county council, district council and police authority that are all Liberal controlled. The sad thing is that the county council had the idea of seeking the endorsement of the electorate for the 7.9 per cent. increase in council tax. One cannot criticise the council for holding consultations but, when it did so, it did not get the answer that it wanted; it ignored the result and went ahead with the 7.9 per cent. increase that it had intended to impose on the people of Dorset all along. Fortunately, new clause 6 does not introduce such a system. It would make it incumbent on an authority to accept the verdict of any referendum, if it wanted to impose a substantial council tax increase.
In Dorset, the council decided to consult a few focus groups, comprising individuals who had been carefully selected--mainly, but not exclusively, by Liberal Democrats. The groups included many people who worked for the council, but who did not live in the area that was to be affected by the increases. It was only after pressure from Conservatives in local government in Dorset that the county council expanded the consultation process to include people who were readers of local newspapers. It was even accepted that people who wrote to county hall would have their views taken into account.
Having gathered all that information, the council then had the gall to reject the verdict on the basis that a large number of those who responded were pensioners. Those people are on fixed incomes and resented the fact that they would have to pay an increase in their council tax that was substantially above the rate of inflation, as a result of which they would have to cut back on other items of household expenditure. At its meeting, the Liberal-controlled county council dismissed those representations from pensioners on the grounds that they did not really count. That was the most appalling snub and insult to a key group in Dorset; they are people who have worked hard throughout their lives and have chosen to spend their twilight years in the county, where they make a major contribution to the community. Why should their views count for less than the views of others?
New clause 6 commends itself to me because it makes it clear that referendums would have to be held on a universal basis, reinforcing democracy in those council areas where the local authority does not keep in regular contact with the wishes of the people. I support the new clause and condemn the way in which the Government are imposing a new capping regime on local authorities. Before the election, the Labour party suggested that it was in favour of expanding local democracy, but in practice the Government are doing the reverse.
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset):
I shall speak on new clause 6. If the doctrine espoused at a late stage of yesterday evening by probably the most impressive Member on the Labour Benches, the right hon. Member
Ms Armstrong:
He did not say that at all.
Mr. Letwin:
Speaking from a sedentary position--as she has often done throughout these debates--the Minister said that the right hon. Gentleman did not say that. As a matter of fact, the record shows that he did, and, as he is a deep thinker, he may have expressed a view that is widely held by Labour Members. Nevertheless, I retain a touching faith in the parliamentary process. I hope that it is not naive and that it may become more important if the House comes to its senses and realises that it needs to adjust its proceedings, so that it has an impact on Bills rather than merely discussing them.
New clause 6 is a vital clause and the whole House--indeed posterity--will owe a great debt to my hon. Friends who introduced it. I hope, too, that the Conservative party will realise that it owes them a debt, because I hope that the essence of the clause, if not the detail, will be accepted in due time as party policy. The reason lies in the origins of capping. I freely admitted last night, and continue to admit, that capping was a mistaken policy from the start. The then Prime Minister my right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Thatcher and others justified the policy on the grounds that it was impossible to leave to local democracy decisions about the level of expenditure, which could have a macro-economic impact, when most of the people in an area did not even bother to turn up at the polls, and when many people could be hugely disadvantaged by high rates of the then domestic rate because they were among the few people who paid it. My right hon. and noble Friend adduced examples of councils such as Hackney, which had relatively few inhabitants who actually paid any domestic rate after various subsidies were taken into account, and which could raise its domestic rate, more or less without limit, affecting only those voters who never voted for it anyway.
It is important that the Government should realise that the initial argument for capping was a democratic deficit. The new clause would reverse that democratic deficit and ensure that there would not be capping if the majority of the population turned up at the polls and made it clear that they favoured the level of expenditure proposed by the council. In other words, new clause 6 undermines the only logic--although they have never expressed any--that the Government could be using.
"Although we recognise that they will most probably now pass into law . . . the Association will continue to oppose the provisions in clauses 28 and 29 to retain capping powers and to localise part of the cost of council tax benefit."
In conclusion, it seems to me from reading the debates in Committee and in the statutory instrument Committee, and all the discussions inside and outside this place, that the Government have comprehensively lost the argument every single time. Why cannot they be big enough, with their vast majority and all the panoply of new Labour and spin doctors, to say, "Yes, we got it wrong. We want to do it differently. We have heard what people say. We have heard the united voice of local government. We are going to look at this again."
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