Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

The party of the noble Baroness is nothing if not consistent. This is not the second but the fourth time that both Houses have debated a version of the amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to consider each year whether to exercise the power provided by subsection (2) to set a date for revaluation and, whatever the outcome of his decision, to give reasons for it. In other words, he would have to produce a report annually—or at some other interval—of his consideration and justification. The noble Baroness has argued, as she did in Committee, that the amendment is necessary because it would introduce some certainty, clarity and accountability into the process, whereas at the moment the Secretary of State can allow a situation to drift until, at a whim, he decides to impose, without public debate and in isolation, a revaluation decision. She suggested that her amendment would give the country and Parliament an opportunity to consider and to understand the reasons for revaluation, or no revaluation, on an annual basis, and that this would reassure everyone that the right decision was being taken for the right reasons at the right time. Before I deal with the reasoning behind the amendment, which I believe is well meant but unsustainable, let me deal with the practical implications, which are not only unnecessary but counterproductive. This amendment is different from the previous one. The noble Baroness removed the reference to house price divergence. We dealt with that comprehensively in Committee, but, nevertheless, removing the dog does not mean that you have dealt with the bark. There is an issue about what else might credibly prompt revaluation, given the rationale for revaluation and its structure and history. The noble Baroness has accepted my argument that there can be no one golden rule. Nevertheless, with or without that specific reference to house price divergence, the arguments about levels of divergence would be bound to remain the main focus of the debate. That would inevitably mean that an annual review of this sort would be concerned with divergence of prices. It would occur not only at the point of the year when it was being debated properly, but would fill up the empty months between them, too. As we argued before, that focus would inevitably require us to go through something akin to a full revaluation exercise every year. That seems to me to be a recipe for greater uncertainty and turbulence than anything that we have at the moment.