---

Council Tax Capping (Surrey)

It is certainly vindictive, but I am not sure that I give the Government credit for that much thought. I suspect that the process is much more random than that. I think that they merely pick a couple of random councils to make public scapegoats of so that they can claim to have some authority over local authorities. The fundamental problem, as the Minister well knows, is that council tax is a deeply unpopular tax. That is why the Government need to wave their big sticks around when it comes to Budget-setting time—in order to demonstrate that they are doing something about council tax. We all know that council tax rises are above inflation every single year. The tax is felt keenly, particularly by the low-paid, because they know that it is unfair. It is not based on their ability to pay or even on the price of their house. It bears no relationship to whether they own their property and is based on a notional value that is decades out of date. Until the Government are prepared to grasp the whole of local government finance, introduce a system of local taxation based on people's income and ability to pay and devolve power and finance-raising down to local authorities in a serious way, I am afraid that we will go through the same charade every year. It is deeply depressing.