Council Tax

The hon. Gentleman is quite right; I am very grateful. The sum is so small that one could almost forget about it, in the overall scheme of things. It was also pointed out that although the Government are posing as a defender of the council tax payer, there is a certain irony, because there is not evidence of a level playing field. Under this Government, in the first eight years of the Metropolitan Police Authority's existence, its precept was allowed nearly to quadruple, without any intervention from the Government by way of a threat of capping. It is interesting that no action was taken. Whether that had anything to do with the political complexion of the Mayor who then ran the police authority is difficult to say, but the opaque nature of the way in which the system works sometimes causes people to question whether decisions are taken on an entirely objective basis. The treatment of the two police authorities is interesting. One wonders whether the treatment was entirely due to what I have just mentioned, or whether the Labour party hoped that Derbyshire was a county council it might just have hung on to in an election that was about to come up as the orders were being laid. The ruse did not work, of course, and I suspect that Labour will not have to worry about any shire counties being under its control for some considerable time. That does not alter the overall picture. As hon. Members from Surrey explained very well in the debate, the situation is a consequence not of profligacy on the part of the Surrey police authority, but of unfair funding that seems to leave the Surrey police—a force that faces considerable policing challenges, which were well set out in the debate by the Members representing the county—one of the worst-funded police forces in respect of the pressures that it faces. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) will speak in the debate, so I leave him to develop that point in more detail. Against that background, despite the Minister's valiant attempt to present the order in her usual reasonable way, there is a bit of cheek in the Government capping Surrey and claiming to put right a problem of their own creation, because of the way in which the capping regime has become too blunt as time has gone on, and the lack of transparency in the funding formula. If there is an issue about the people of Surrey's priorities in relation to the policing budgets, and about what they think is the appropriate level to expend given the pressure of policing demands on the county, the right way is to let them decide. Rather than a decision being taken on high, with the right hon. Lady or any of her successors arriving in some vice-regal capacity to rescue them, it would be much better to let the people of Surrey have a vote and decide whether the proposed precept rise is excessive. That would be a genuinely democratic result in which people could all have faith. It would save us all having to go through the annual ritual of the debate about what is notional and what is actual—I shall not go down that route—and it would save having to go through the annual ritual of householders being somewhat bemused when they open the rebilled bills for comparatively small amounts. There was a time when capping had to be used to constrain large increases in council tax bills that went well beyond the norm. We are getting to the stage where a comparatively small excess on the part of an authority which, on the face of it, has a history of not having received its fair share of the available pot, is being dealt with in a manifestly disproportionate way. With respect, clodhopping might be a more accurate description of how the matter is being dealt with. As on previous occasions, we do not intend to divide the House, but we want to register the fact that the situation is probably an indication that the system is approaching its sell-by date, and that next year others may have to put in place a different system to make sure that the issues are decided by voters, not in a debate that would seem somewhat unreal to people in the county of Surrey.