Council Tax Support

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby—I was under the impression that I would have quite a bit longer to speak. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) on securing the debate. He has demonstrated his long experience in the world of local government and as a Government Minister, and he even offered solutions to the Government to deal with the problem that they have created for the people of our country.

As other Members have attested, the scheme of localisation for council tax support is hitting the most vulnerable in our society. Some 2.2 million people are seeing their council tax increase as a direct result of the changes. Diabolically, that includes almost 400,000 disabled people, while 117,000 people in receipt of severe or enhanced disability premiums will also pick up larger bills.

The Government could do something positive to help, and my right hon. Friend has pointed out some of those things. The legislation introducing the changes already includes the Labour amendment that requires an independent review within three years. However, such has been the severity of the changes’ impact that I would like to see that review brought forward now, so that the full consequences can be assessed and the policy re-examined and changed.

We have already heard how, following the debacle of the poll tax, a national council tax benefit scheme was introduced in 1992, with the aim of helping councils keep council taxes down for the poorest citizens. I will not go into that in any great detail, but suffice it to say that that allowed some 800,000 working people nationally to receive lower council tax bills because their income was low, while others on passported benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance and income support, paid no council tax.

As part of the coalition’s dogmatic devotion to overhauling the welfare system, hefty changes to the council tax benefit were made. Most notably—others have talked about this—the responsibility for administering the scheme was devolved to local authorities. Was that not just a great idea? Dump the responsibility on the local authorities and when people get angry and upset, it will be the councils who get it in the neck, and the Tory-led Government can join in blaming them for not having adequate enough systems to protect the vulnerable. That is exactly what is happening. I have cases in my surgery where people believe that the council is doing them in. I put them right.

That said, our local authorities have a detailed understanding of local circumstances and a knowledge of what is happening on the ground. They are therefore well positioned to assess the needs of local people, and they are often able to do so more accurately than central Government.

However, the Local Government Finance Act 2012 has done more than simply localise the programme of council tax support. Instead, the Act abolished council tax benefit as we knew it and required the local authorities to design and implement their own localised reduction schemes from scratch. Again, that is not necessarily problematic—not, that is, until we consider that at the same time as introducing these changes, the budget from central Government to help pay for such crucial support was cut by 10%.

Further adding to the complexity, the Government simultaneously insisted on certain conditions being met, removing the free hand that might have allowed local authorities to design workable solutions. The prime example, of course, is the stipulation that pensioners must be protected from the Government’s cuts; that point was made by my colleague in the north-east, my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). That is hardly objectionable either. Older people reliant on pensions are on a fixed income and would stand to be hard hit by any statutory increases, but what it means in practice is that the funding available is intertwined with an area’s demographic make-up. In short, the more pensioners within any given boundary, the steeper the reductions will be elsewhere and for everyone else.

Ultimately, those reductions are shouldered by other vulnerable people. To put it into context, the average reduction across all local authorities has been about 19%, according to the Local Government Association, as a result of higher numbers of pensioners in a given area, but it can be as high as 27%. That has meant that, as of April last year, 6,600 working-age people on low incomes across the Stockton borough who previously did not pay council tax have had to start contributing for the first time. Because of the reductions in support, a further 6,100 are paying more than last year.

Clearly, that runs completely counter to the original aim of the council tax benefit scheme, which—in case anyone needed reminding—was to protect precisely those vulnerable people who are now feeling the sharp end of the coalition’s cutbacks. Instead, we have a situation whereby councils doing their very best to protect vulnerable groups, such as the disabled and carers, are having to perform intricate balancing acts to ensure that working families are not disproportionately burdened by severe cuts to the support that they receive. They all have to do that while ensuring that their own financial situation remains robust enough to continue to provide services and support. Let us not forget that this increased liability came at precisely the same time as 2,800 families across the Stockton borough were being subjected to the bedroom tax, placing further strain on household incomes and exacerbating the cost of living crisis in their households.

While the Government profess to support the most vulnerable, and the Deputy Prime Minister boasts of his party’s success in lifting thousands out of taxation, the coalition’s actions in pulling support from underneath the most vulnerable contradicts those claims in plain sight. With only nine months between the statement of intent and localisation, local authorities were left with considerable logistical headaches, having to meet the Government’s criteria while continuing to offer as much support as possible to vulnerable persons and safe- guarding financial arrangements. That is not to mention communicating the changes to residents.

In my local authority area, Stockton borough council stands to lose about £3 million a year as a result of the funding changes. That highlights not only the severity of the reductions for local people, but the inadequacy of the Government’s transitional funding pot, which was hastily cobbled together when political pressure began to mount. In this context, the £100 million pot is a very small drop in a very large ocean, amounting to less than 25% of projected savings. That is particularly true when funds are time-limited to 12 months and any award comes with restrictive conditions that might mean the scheme costs even more to implement, as the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will know.

One year in, there has been a tangible impact on council tax collection in Stockton. By the end of 2012-13, Stockton borough council had collected 98.2% of the council tax it billed for the year, which is the same level of success it has enjoyed in many recent years—a very good performance. Collection for 2013-14 was down to 96.9%, and only 76% was collected from those paying for the first time. Although Stockton’s overall collection rate is marginally better than the LGA’s projected national average, approximately £1.2 million remained unpaid by first-time payers at the year end—a figure that has not been compensated for by central Government and which will inevitably result in service reductions elsewhere.

Such higher levels of non-payment have resulted in sharp increases in enforcement action across the country. Some 600,000 court summonses were issued last year for non-payment—a pattern reflected in Stockton-on-Tees, where the number of summonses issued last year more than doubled on the previous year. With 4,700 issued to claimants paying for the first time, the default rate is more than 70%.

Stockton borough council has thought outside the box in introducing new initiatives to increase payment rates—for example, text messaging and home visits—while supporting those struggling to pay, but difficult decisions will be needed in future about further action against residents who are themselves making delicate decisions about priorities and how to balance finances. It is worth stating explicitly that, although these measures have generated some success, all the extra recovery action has increased the overall cost of collecting council tax.

The non-payment situation is liable to worsen as we enter the second year, because new bills remain unpaid from last year, and claimants with sums unpaid from the very beginning continue to pay off their arrears. I hope Members will agree that the independent review should be brought forward, as my right hon. Friend suggested, so that we can pull together the evidence of the scheme’s impacts now and do something fair for some of the most vulnerable and financially poor in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

We have listened to a lot of Opposition Members speaking, and that is all to the good, but nobody has spoken from the Government side. I would not have done so, as I turned up late, if it had not been for some of the nonsense that Opposition Members were coming out with.

[Alex Cunningham]

You do not care.

[Andrew Percy]

I think the hon. Gentleman’s comment sums up the debate. Opposition Members are not interested in having a sensible debate on the matter. All they are interested in is a dirty, filthy little political campaign that is all about trying to label anybody who disagrees with them as somehow not caring. It is ridiculous, and the public are seeing through it. [Interruption.]