Council Tax Valuation Bands Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 22nd April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench does not want to get involved in this amendment and, indeed, series of thoughts produced by my noble friends Lord True and Lord Marlesford. However, there is a technical point. Can he confirm whether a property has to be registered at the Land Registry? I rather suspect that the answer is no.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marlesford has done a great service in bringing this matter to the attention of your Lordships’ House. However, I am reminded of Ernie Bevin saying that if you open Pandora’s box you do not know how many Trojan horses will come out. We have to tread carefully here. As one of only two Conservative Members of Parliament who did not support the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland, and who consistently voted against it on every conceivable and possible occasion, I hope that we will tread extremely carefully.

As I said, my noble friend has done the House a service in bringing this matter before us, but I think that perhaps we should look at differentiating between those who are truly resident in this country and those who are not. The escalation of property prices, particularly in London, has had enormous repercussions for the native population. We should consider some form of surcharge for those who merely buy properties as investments and rarely, if ever, live in them. There has to be some consideration of how we deal with that.

As I say, we have to tread extremely carefully but, of course, we know that because of the lateness of this day in this Session of Parliament, which will shortly come to an end, there will not be time for an exhaustive Report stage on this Bill. We should thank my noble friend Lord Marlesford for bringing this matter to our attention and consider how best we can approach it in the forthcoming Session.