Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab) [V]]

I put on the record my thanks for Connected Communities, a best-practice innovation in my local authority which promotes getting around to meet many of those affected by covid and—a double whammy—by the impact of Brexit on my community. They go around to do assessments, assisting many older and disabled people, and people who have fallen on hard times because of coronavirus and losing their jobs.

I also put on the record my concern about the tone of the introductory speech by the Minister, who seemed to be attacking the sector. In actual fact, we need to be praising the sector and building it up; instead, he used it as an opportunity to attack councils. I think this is a time for us all to pull together.

In my brief remarks, I want to highlight two broken promises of the Government. The first is failing to address the social care crisis—for many years, since 2010 when the Tories were first elected, they have promised to sort out social care, promising to put disabled people and older folk first. However, we still do not have a proper funding solution for social care. My message is: get on with it.

The second broken promise is the promise to do “whatever is necessary” for local government. I am extremely concerned about the waste of £1,000 a day on consultants on the failed test, trace and isolate system; that was spent instead of funding local government’s shoe leather, to go around helping people to understand and to educate them about the importance of self-isolation. That is the role of local government but, instead, it was bypassed for an expensive test, trace and isolate system, with consultants—£1,000 a day, what a waste—to tell the Government what to do. At a much more value-for-money price, local government could have done a much better job.

Finally, on the question of council tax, we all know it is a regressive tax, which tends to hurt working families much more disproportionately than others. It falls heavily on renters, who will probably never be able to get on to the housing ladder in my constituency. Year after year, they have to pay more and more council tax, while landlords who own the properties do not pay a penny. We know that forcing councils to raise council tax in this way this spring will be terrible for those affected by coronavirus. The Government promised to do whatever was necessary and, instead, time after time we see local government being attacked. After the worst recession of any major economy and with the virus still not under control, now is not the time to put households under more pressure. I say to the Government and the Minister: rethink this policy.