Orders of the Day — Local Government and Miscellaneous Financial Provisions (Scotland) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 December 1957.

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Photo of Mr Eustace Willis Mr Eustace Willis , Edinburgh East 12:00, 17 December 1957

I wish to return now to what I, like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. D. Johnston), regard as the real problem. I should have thought that one of the reasons, if not the important reason, why anybody with any knowledge or association with local government activities in Scotland was against the Bill was that it failed to deal with a problem which everyone has said in the past is the real problem of local authorities.

I do not know of one single person who has spoken about local authority administration during the past six or seven years who has not pointed out that the real problem is the ever-increasing rate poundage and the urgent necessity of finding means of supplementing existing local government revenue. That has been the view of practically every body, association or organisation which has considered the matter, including the Sorn Committee. I have a whole volume of quotations, but I do not want to weary the House by going through them.

The trouble with the exceedingly narrow basis of taxation from which we get our local revenue is that it is unjust and that every time the rates go up, so the injustice is aggravated. When we consider that local rates have increased by about 300 per cent. since before the war, the injustice which was seen to exist pre-war has become increasingly obvious to almost everybody, except, apparently, the Government. That is the crux of local government finance, and the Bill does nothing to alter it.

When the Committee to inquire into local government finance was set up, it was some time before we could even discover from the Secretary of State that there was a Committee in Scotland inquiring into the matter. A considerable amount of probing was needed from this side of the House before we could discover that. Everybody expected that the problems of local government finance would be examined. We are told that they have been examined, but we have not been given a report by any Committee which examined any other system or form of adding to local government income.

We have been told that other methods were considered impracticable, but we have never been told why. It is not the way to treat the House of Commons, or to treat Members who have to deal with local government finance and to legislate for it, simply to say that somebody—we do not even know who—has considered the matter and has discarded any alternative suggestion. We know neither who were the people nor what their reasons were. That is not good enough.

The Government suggest that they will do some little thing about it and that they will rerate industry to the extent of 25 per cent. I found it difficult to understand the reasons for this partial rerating of industry. As I read the White Paper for England and Wales, it seemed to me that the argument of the Government was that the national contribution to the income of local authorities had increased to the point at which the ratio was now 6 to 5 when compared with the sum raised locally, and that something had to be done to adjust that balance.

Where do these figures of 6 to 5 come in in relation to Scotland? I understood from the reply given to my hon. Friend that the Government contribution in Scotland is something like 40 per cent.