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Local Taxation

: I hope that my hon. Friend will be wary of falling into the trap of not recognising that local tax-raising and national tax-raising is taxation raised locally. The moneys come from individuals, local people. The question is how much is retained by the centre and what is done with the revenue. Does my hon. Friend accept that we can never separate local government finance from local government powers? Perhaps Liberal Members have lost that part of the theory. They have come up with a view about local income tax, which has some intellectual coherence, but that seems not to walk alongside the differentiation of local power and national power. There must be a constitutional and democratic settlement to make things work.