Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Smith of Leigh and Baroness Hollis of Heigham

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, in principle I support the localisation of council tax benefit, but I do not support this scheme at all. It will have impacts, and my noble friend Lady Hollis has raised them clearly. She talked about the regional in-fighting that we will have. Certainly, we believe that it will be worse in the area that I represent and many other parts of the country—worse, even than the poll tax. When the poll tax was in place, it was relatively easy for me; I was only chairman of finance. When somebody came to me and complained about the poll tax, I could always say, “The Tories have introduced the poll tax”. We swept all the Tories off the council; it was very easy. But now, when they say, “What are you doing with my council tax benefit support?”, at the end of the day I will have to devise a scheme. That will be down to me.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

It has been done to you.

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

It has been done to me. What options would we have in designing such a scheme? I have shared with my colleagues some of the initial thoughts that we have had in Wigan; we have not got quite as far as announcing what they will be. We will unfortunately not raise the money from the empty homes thing, so we will have to make some anticipation of where the costs will come from. Will they come from council taxpayers? I do not think so. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, we are not going to ask for an increase in council tax above the minimum amount that the Government will allow us to have in order to put money into council tax benefit. A referendum on that is certainly doomed to defeat. We will never try that. Will we make cuts in services to put more money into the council tax support scheme? That is an option but as my noble friend Lady Hollis mentioned, the impact of such a policy will be on the same group of individuals who should benefit. They are the people who need and rely on many of the council’s services that are already facing £66 million of cuts over the next few years. Where am I going to find the extra £2 million or so to pay for this? Or we could have to have a scheme that pays lowers benefits than the current scheme. That is very difficult because the people upon whom this will impact are the working poor. They are the ones who will really suffer from this—if we discount some of the vulnerable groups we will talk about in future amendments. I fear for some of the political consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I know of the kind of campaigning done by certain political parties, including the BNP, about people who are downtrodden. They say, “No one thinks about you. Here you are, you are poor and you live in these difficult communities”. Such parties could campaign on those issues.