Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I suspect his experience is shared by other Members, but I have to tell him that the situation is worse than he thought because, even in opposition, Labour is planning to clobber pensioners. My Department has been almost swamped by demands from Labour councils to have the right to be able to tax pensioners on council tax benefit, as they attempted to tax the poor.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is possible that in the next financial year more councils, including Conservative-controlled ones, will decide to increase their council tax. Councils are worried that although help has been made available for a council tax freeze, the Government may decide not only not to continue with it beyond 2013, but to withdraw the help made available for previous years, thus creating a black hole in council finances. Will the Secretary of State give a categorical assurance that the money made available in 2013 for the council tax freeze will be made available to councils on a permanent basis?

[Mr Pickles]

It is in the base. It goes into the base next year, and I can give a guarantee to the extent that I can guarantee anything with regard to financial support for councils, but if the hon. Gentleman is expecting me to project levels of council tax support beyond the millennium—perhaps well into the next millennium— I have to tell him that I cannot do so. It is wholly erroneous to suggest this is just for one year, however.