Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

moved Amendment No. 2:"Page 1, line 7, leave out from ““England,”” to end of line 8 and insert ““on a date prior to the making of any order under section 5(4) and (4A) of that Act.””””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I return to an amendment that I moved in Committee. I noted that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said that she thought that that amendment was ““tautologous””. That is a wonderful word, so I thank the noble Baroness for giving me the opportunity to use it again; it trips off the tongue. I went away to read her comments. Having done so, I am returning to this matter, because the crux of her argument came down to one revealing sentence, which I shall quote. She said that,"““any revaluation could use only the existing banding structure, because there could be no change to bands until after a new valuation list had been compiled . . . Bills would be issued against this list because they would be bound to be, and only then would it be possible to make the necessary changes to band structure to account for inflation and any other reforms thought desirable””.—[Official Report, 07/2/06; col. GC306.]" There is an issue here. The whole point of the amendment was to ensure that the council bands could not be changed between now and a revaluation, or unless a revaluation was proposed. I suspect that this is not as much of a chicken and egg situation—I think that the words were ““horse and cart””—as the Minister has suggested. Her words suggest that any other reforms that were thought desirable could be made after a revaluation had been completed. In bringing back this amendment, I believe that it would be short-sighted in the extreme to plan to have reforms as an afterthought to revaluation. It is hardly the fault of our Benches that the Bill allows for so little scope. If the Bill more comprehensively provided for the needs of council tax—which I know is not, and was never, its purpose, although it should have been—these issues would have been addressed; they are all interdependent. The amendment would ensure that the revaluation occurred before bands are changed. No decision can be made on council tax bands until a view of the full council tax valuation spectrum is available—if, indeed, it is required and necessary. From the Minister’s explanation, the only thing that would work would be that council tax bills would be issued after a new valuation, although under the old banding scheme, which would mean that the people whose houses had risen up the bands would be hard hit. Can the Minister say what would prevent the Government from changing legislation so that Bills would be issued only after the new banding system was in place? The Minister described the complicated set of events that led to the final revaluation list. The amendment, far from confusing that process, is intended to bring an order to it, starting with the basic value and proceeding to the banding and then to the issuing of bills. Widening council tax bands disproportionately hits areas with high property values, which are not necessarily the same as areas of high income. We have seen council tax rising at twice the level of inflation per year—over 76 per cent since 1997. It is about time that the Government properly reassessed their local government finance strategy, which could take account of a revaluation if it became necessary. I beg to move.