Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

That is not the world as we would wish it, but it is the world in which we find ourselves. To borrow a phrase used by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in our debate on Report, this is “the real red line”. That is why the amendment is strongly supported by all four groups in the Local Government Association. I trust that it will receive equally strong support from all sides of the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of the amendment because I see that very many speakers are listed for the debate that is to follow, and I am sure that they do not want to sit here too late.

I made my main point when I supported the similar but different amendment moved last week by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I will not repeat it but will instead make two points. First, in the debate on the previous amendment there was a reference to this issue being “poll tax number two”. I spoke about the poll tax on 16 October. The difference is that, for whatever reason—and people may want to criticise it fiercely—it was part of the original poll tax concept that “everybody should pay something”. In the circumstances, that was not acceptable to the public. In the present circumstances, the proposal by the Government is not intended deliberately to do that—but inadvertently this will be the result unless the amendment or something very like it is agreed. As was said in the debate on the previous amendment, and as my noble friend Lord Tope said, large numbers of people who hitherto have not had to pay council tax because they were given council tax reliefs will find themselves having to do this. This is something that we should try to avoid.

My second point picks up on something on which my noble friend the Minister has apparently laid great stress. On 16 October, she said,

“we have never consulted on reducing council tax discounts”.—[Official Report, 16/10/12; col. 1422.]

Does that mean that Parliament cannot pass an amendment for a proposal on which the Government have not consulted? Are we to be excluded from expressing our views and amending a clause in the Bill because Ministers chose not to consult on it? That is an extraordinary proposition, and I cannot believe—I say this with some kindness—that my noble friend has really worked out the consequences of what she said. It would put an enormous barrier in the way of Parliament debating legislation of this kind if Ministers could simply say, “You cannot possibly have this because we did not consult on it”. Ministers may not have consulted on it but some of us in Parliament and the Local Government Association, as my noble friend Lord Tope said, have come down strongly in favour of this amendment.

I simply cannot accept the argument that because the Government chose not to consult on something this House is prevented from passing it. With those two arguments, I totally support my noble friend Lord Tope. As I have made very clear to my Front Bench, if he presses this matter to a Division, I shall certainly support it.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I also spoke at Report so I will be brief. It gives me some distress to say to my noble friend Lord Tope that, when he said that this amendment addresses the arguments against the amendment that we debated at such huge length on Report, I cannot agree with him. It does not address certain fundamental points of principle. I acknowledge that it is supported widely within the Local Government Association and by many council leaders who will be glad for a penny if they can get hold of one. However, the reality is that when you are making decisions about council tax you are not making decisions within a single box relating to benefit, you are looking at the totality of a local authority’s budget and budgetary decisions.

I hear my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who I unreservedly admire and whose expertise on these matters the House respects hugely. With respect, however, I must say that I think he is wrong to try to construct a doctrine whereby the Government are saying that because they had not consulted, Parliament cannot determine—because of course Parliament can determine. I made that point on Report. I say as a local authority leader that we have not consulted on this matter. We have not asked the public about it because it was not within the parameters of the scheme that was proposed.

Were Parliament suddenly to decide that this new broadening of the tax base should take place, it would be an enormous surprise to the council tax payers in almost every authority up and down the land suddenly to discover that a new tax was falling on many single person households. While I acknowledge that the popular and sensible move to protect pensioners is being taken, that only means that this change will bear down more heavily on other people involved as recipients of this discount, such as lone parents. We discussed that on Report. The amendment would mean that it would fall even more disproportionately on those heads.

Regardless of whether the provision is a doctrine of government, I do not think that the amendment addresses the problem. I have said throughout the course of the Bill’s passage that I would have preferred for this to be wrapped up in universal credit. I have been open about that. But it is a bit like the lady who swallowed a fly and then had to swallow a spider to catch the fly. It would make a further structural change in council tax benefit, which by definition has not been thought through or considered, to impose taxation on a large subset of single-parent households. I do not know whether we are talking about 8 million or 5 million of them; it could be fewer. Perhaps the Minister will tell us. But I do not think that that is a good way to make policy. It seems to be making policy on the hoof. Some of us might think that we are having rather a lot of that lately and I do not think that this House should add to it.