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Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for saving me from having to reply to my hon. Friend’s intervention. I, too, found it difficult to see its relevance to the Bill, although he made a good point. As I was saying, the problem with revaluation is that its technical merit is almost always outweighed by its political cost. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test said, that does not bother those of us who are in favour of scrapping the entire system and replacing it with a completely different local government taxation system. In fact, it makes our case better. As the lack of revaluation makes council tax increasingly anomalous and unfair, more and more people will come to see the good sense of our alternative proposals. I suppose that one could say that we were following the rule of worse is better.