Graham P Jones
Main Page: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Mr Pickles
South Ribble deserves a lot of praise for freezing council tax four years on the trot. That is very welcome indeed. It is strange that a number of authorities, the majority of them Labour, have come in at 1.98% or 1.99%. In a way, that undermines their claim that local government funding is inadequate. If it was inadequate, I am confident that they would have gone for a larger increase in council tax.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it is a disgrace that the last authority, with a Conservative administration in county hall, is being investigated by the police? There has perhaps been a misappropriation of funds, which the police are looking into, and serious problems with the accounting at county hall. The Labour administration which has come in is having to pick up the pieces.
Mr Speaker
Very tangentially related to the question of a council tax freeze, but the intellectual ingenuity of the Secretary of State is such that I feel sure he can respond both pithily and in order.