Council Tax

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I recognise the experience of the noble Baroness in this area, but I reassure her and the House that the Government will ensure that local authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets at the spending review. We expect that demographic and unit cost pressures will be met through council tax, social care precepts and long-term efficiencies. The overall level of local government funding, including council tax and the social care precept, will be determined in the round at the spending review in the normal way.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, when I raised this issue in July and asked if the Government would introduce additional bands to mitigate what has become an arbitrary, regressive and unfair tax, the Minister said that the suggestion had merit. But he then rejected it, even though three Conservative noble Lords broadly supported the principle. Can I add my weight to what my noble friend Lord Leigh said? As the Government look for fairer ways of funding local government and social care, might the Treasury not have another look at this?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I recognise my noble friend’s interest on this issue and I reassure him that his strong comments will be fed back to the department. However, he will know what I am about to say: creating new bands would also require a revaluation, both to determine which properties might be captured by those bands and to ensure a common valuation approach to all properties. Given that council tax income is not redistributed, new bands for the highest value properties would yield little extra money in areas where house prices are lower and demand for services may be higher.