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Mr. Weir: I would just like to point out that the Scottish National party is also here helping out as best it can. It is noticeable that not one Labour Member from Scotland has spoken in the debate.

Mr. Wilshire: I grovel to the SNP. I am a great friend of the SNP. I have had connections with it in previous Parliaments. I am desperately sorry—I did not mean to fail to mention it. That intervention helps to underline my point. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that it is not only English Labour Members who appear not to care less about helping pensioners or rescuing the Government, but Scottish Labour Members, and they seem to try to run the Government from time to time. It is a pleasure to be here to see what little bit of help I can give to this discredited Government.

David Cairns (Greenock and Inverclyde) (Lab): The pleasure is all ours.

Mr. Wilshire: I am glad that the pleasure is all the Labour Government's. I hear the Parliamentary Private Secretary singing our praises—the cavalry is coming to his rescue. I promise him that the more mess the Government make, the more willing we will be to pick up the pieces come the next election.

The Bill is not, as has been said, about council tax; it is about a brown envelope being bunged to pensioners in the hope that the Government can buy a few votes. It is a Government measure that admits that they are not doing enough for pensioners. They have caned pensioners through extra costs, and they now suddenly realise in a moment of panic that they are not doing enough to help, so they come along with a rushed measure that says: let us give pensioners some money and hope it will be all right. That was done in a panic, and not even from generosity and thought. The Government were suddenly confronted with pensioners who were prepared to go to prison because of the Government's crass incompetence in putting up costs for pensioners. Faced with the thought of the bad publicity of pensioners going to prison because of them, the Government panicked and introduced the Bill.

Not only that; this is not only a panic measure but a blatant attempt to buy votes. Why, one might ask, are the Government having to do that? The opinion polls say it all. The Government are losing support, so they panic and try to buy votes. It will not work.

There is one other reason behind the Bill, rather than council tax. I have a suspicion that it owes something to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's having seen a wounded Prime Minister and thinking that if he can leap to the Dispatch Box in the middle of a Budget and produce, like a rabbit out of a hat, some money for pensioners, when the moment comes at which the Labour party decides to get rid of its leader, the Chancellor will be seen as the person who can get rabbits out of hats, and will be placed to take over. The reality of what is happening here this afternoon is as I describe it, which probably explains why the Labour Benches are so empty. Labour Members are too embarrassed to come here and be part of this.
 
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The Government have tried—I suppose we should take them at face value—to pass the measure off as an attempt to help with council tax. In his Budget statement, the Chancellor said:

"The evidence shows that their council tax bills"—

referring to the older pensioners—

"take a higher share of their income than the rest of the population. So for this year, for those over 70, on top of the winter fuel payment, we will pay an additional £100 to each household."—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 336.]

There we have the clear attempt to pass the measure off as an effort to help with council tax. So let us take this Labour Government at their word when they say that it is an attempt to deal with the council tax problem, and look at what the problem really is, and at how bad a mess this Government have made of matters.

Let us take my constituency, as just one example of hundreds. In 1997, when this Government took over, my constituents in Spelthorne on council tax band D were paying £630.77. By 2003–04, the same people were paying £1,170.65. That is an extra £540, or an increase of 85.6 per cent. I have a large number of elderly people on fixed incomes, like many other hon. Members, and the Government are quite right to say that people on fixed incomes, having been asked to find another £540 over that period with very little extra coming in to help them to pay it, need help. My word, they need help! That is all down to what has happened under this Government.

That puts the £100 into some sort of context. Having caned those people for an extra £540, the Government want us to believe that it is generous for them to give £100 of it back. That does not strike me as generous at all; it strikes me as quite miserly. Again, it is an attempt to get publicity without actually solving the problem.

If that is the problem that the Labour Government have asked us here this afternoon to try to sort out for them, let us be clear about its cause, which is not what they want us to believe. I can do no better than refer to the Audit Commission, which is a neutral body. It seeks after facts, and reports accordingly. I quote from a summary of a report that it produced entitled "Council tax increases 2002/03 to 2003/04: Why were they so high?" What was it, according to the Audit Commission, that caused the problem? Point 8 of its summary says:

"We also looked at the impact of changes to grant on council tax increases. The 8 per cent. national increase in grant for local councils was more than in previous years."

That is the bit that the Government want us to listen to, but it is point 9 that we need to understand. It says:

"But grant redistribution, which moved grant from London and the south to the midlands and the north"—

in other words, from my constituents to Tony's cronies, which is my interjection, not a comment that the Audit Commission would make—

"led to some councils putting up council tax more than others. We found a clear association between the size of grant increase a council received and their increase in council tax."

The fiddled funding of Labour is the problem that we are addressing. It is a problem that the Government have caused, and that is why I am more than happy to be here to try to put it right.
 
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The Government make much play of the fact that the additional help for council tax comes on top of the help that they have been giving through council tax benefit, so I thought that it might be useful to look at the figures for council tax benefit in Spelthorne, to discover the reality of that means of helping. I found that in 1997, there were 4,854 claims for council tax benefit, but by 2003–04 that figure had fallen to 4,189. So much for the great boost given by extra council tax benefit to more people. Fewer of my constituents are getting that help; no wonder they need a handout of £100 or more.

Insult is added to injury, because when I asked Spelthorne borough council about council tax benefit, I discovered that the benefit that it hands out is not automatically received in full from the Government. It has to find 2.1 per cent. of the benefit that it hands out, which makes a bill of £80,000 for my council tax payers. Spelthorne borough council also pointed out to me that the cost of administering that wonderful Government scheme last year came to £313,276, but that the administrative grant from the Government for doing their work for them was just £144,762. If we take into account the extra cost of the council tax benefit, we find that, far from benefiting from the council tax benefit scheme, the council tax payers in my constituency have to fund it for themselves. My council tax payers have had an extra burden of £169,000 dumped on them in the so-called name of helping people to pay their council tax. That is a wonderful achievement by the Government. They say that they will help people to pay their bill, but they then come up with a scheme that puts up the bill that has to be paid in the first place. That is madness. It does not help; it makes matters worse. That is another reason why the £100 will not get us very far. The Government push up the bill, give people a little of that back and think that they are being generous.

Although I support the Bill in principle, I have some key concerns, which I hope that the Government will be willing to address in Committee. The first has been mentioned, but it needs underlining. It is the concept of waiting until after Christmas for a payment. As I am sure the Minister knows, people start paying their annual council tax in April. Council tax is paid in monthly instalments, but for only 10 months, so people finish paying in January, but the Government in their wisdom will not give them any help to make the April-to-January payments until 31 December. Fat lot of good that is. Most of the money will have been paid by then. People first have to pay the extra that they cannot afford, and then in a so-called bit of generosity, they are told that they will be given a little of it back later. That is not helping people; it is simply making a mockery of them.

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