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Council Tax Capping (Surrey)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on introducing the debate. Derbyshire has been capped in exactly the same way as Surrey, except that we are not having to re-bill this year. We simply have to lose £1.6 million next year and 60 front-line officers in a force that already has 300 fewer police officers than most equivalent authorities. Will my hon. Friend elaborate on the principle of rate capping and the devolution of power? We hear a lot from the Government about localism and allowing local authorities the freedom to operate, yet they take 90 per cent. of taxation to London before handing it out, with strings, to local authorities, saying, "Your localism and your freedom is to operate within these constraints." That would not happen in France, Germany, Scandinavia or the United States. Local authorities in those places have responsibility: they raise the money and run their local police forces and schools.