---

Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill

Could my noble friend confirm that when we get beyond the Lyons report and the need radically to review the valuations of council tax, which has been long overdue since 1991—and I am pleased to see that Members of the Committee on the Benches opposite support that—and the implications that that has for redistribution of grants across the country, if we are going to keep the council tax as a creditable property tax, there is no reason why in this day and age we cannot use that to arrive at an annual review of values? If you have such a review only periodically, you get big radical shifts, whereas, if you have it on an annual basis, the shifts are small and it reflects movements in property values. It also has the benefit of adding buoyancy to the level of council tax. When whatever local authorities those of us here represent need to raise money, it all comes on the bottom line of council tax, but if there is buoyancy in the system, reflecting the rise in the value of property, that could taken care of. Everyone seems to know what happens to house prices. Halifax has produced indices about the movement of house prices by region and area and so on. Surely we can build that into the system, which would allow us to have a much more sensible debate about whether council tax will be a real benefit as a tax for local councils in future.