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Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

I did listen to the hon. Gentleman closely, and that is why I referred to the article in The Mail on Sunday before I referred to the proportion claiming and I shall put on record the position regarding council tax benefit. Nobody in this country is being sent to jail because they cannot afford their council tax. Judges do not do that. The only circumstances in which one can be imprisoned for not paying one’s council tax is if one is unwilling to pay it. There have been two such cases in the past year—Alfred Ridley and Sylvia Hardy. Opposition Members are trying to whip up a storm on the back of the IsItFair campaign and, in my view, they are exploiting people. Through their scaremongering, they are scaring people, many of them low paid and vulnerable. The Government will not allow that to happen. The income of pensioners has risen immeasurably under this Government—