Orders of the Day — Rates

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 5 May 1965.

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Photo of Mr Frederic Bennett Mr Frederic Bennett , Torquay 12:00, 5 May 1965

There were a few sentences early on in the hon. Member's speech on which I wanted to comment, but they passed from my mind in the course of the hon. Member's subsequent lecture on the general rating problem. We all have constituents who are worried not about long-term theoretical discussions so much as about what this Government or that Government may do in the next five, 10 or 15 years. They are worried about finding the money to pay the rates this year. Lest I be accused of making a party political point, let me hasten to add that they were also worried about how they were going to find the money to pay the rates last year. These esoteric discussions about what should be done for the future do not carry us very much further with the problem.

It seems to me that the Government's answer to the problem can be divided into two. First, they put forward the usual excuse, "How can you blame us? Look at the legacy you left behind you." Hon. Members opposite have said that the Tory counter-argument was that the Labour Party does not carry out its pledges, and that this argument will soon fade away. I do not think that it will; it will grow. Anyhow, only time will show.

One argument that will fade away is the Labour whine about the legacy that we left behind. It is now nearly seven months since the Labour Government came into office. How many more months will Ministers go on blaming everything that happens on the previous Government? There must be a time limit, even in their minds. Perhaps tonight we shall be told whether it will be in another nine, 10, 12 or 15 months that they will finally take responsibility for their own policies, or lack of them. This is becoming a little tiring.

The second thing which has happened is that hon. Members opposite have put up their own "Aunt Sallies" and said that we are criticising the Labour Government for not honouring long-term pledges. We are not doing that. That is not what is of pressing importance at the moment. No sensible person would believe that the consequences of an examination by the Allen Committee and the result of other Departmental inquiries which have been going on could possibly bear fruit in the shape of a sudden and dramatic reduction in the rates. No hon. Member on this side of the Committee has said that.

I can assure the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that no one is blaming the Minister in this context. We are asking what the Government propose to do now, in the present situation. The hon. Gentleman opened the debate today in his old familiar fashion reminiscent of the speeches which he made when in opposition. He seemed to be taking a look backwards to the time when his party was in opposition and he addressed he Committee in the charming fashion in which he used to speak in those days. He did not strike me as a Minister in charge of a Department who was determined to deal constructively with the problem. He was having too much fun. I also got the impression that as a Member of Parliament for a London constituency he felt he was representing London and that there were not other parts of the country where people were worried about rating problems.

I do not think that there is yet any case for criticising this Government for not doing something widespread and long term about a variation or modification of rating policy. It has gone on for too long and there is always the danger that if one anomaly is removed another may arise. There are more pressing things which need attention which some of us were trying to deal with before the last election, and which were made apparent when the rating reassessment brought the problem vividly before us.

I speak as one who represents a seaside resort where many retired people live. This hardship has hit them the hardest. Areas such as Torquay, Brighton or Rye and Bexhill are regarded as places where wealthy people go for their holidays, and so they do.

But when the holidaymakers have gone home there are left the residents, including many retired people, who have to pay rates which include the cost of the amenities enjoyed by the holidaymakers. These are the sort of problems we must think about. They were made all the more apparent by the recent rating reassessment. If we had been playing party politics the craziest thing that we Conservatives could have done would be to have had such a rating reassessment because the results affected Conservative areas a great deal more than other areas in the country. Retired people formerly living in large properties who have had to move to smaller flats and people on small fixed incomes were hit the hardest by the effects of the reassessment.

I do not want to go into detail about what was said by Ministers in the present Government prior to the General Election, but in its election pledges the Labour Party gave a genuine impetus to the belief that if a Labour Government were returned something would be done. I do not refer to a long-term review in the next five years or so. The fact that a review of almost everything is coming has become almost a day-to-day motif. Everything which requires to be done is to be preceded by a review. But when there was talk before the election about a comprehensive review, an independent investigation and rapid remedial action being taken, people thought that, apart from long-term possibilities, something would be done immediately. Their hopes were raised by the fact that the Rating Interim Relief Measure which was brought in by the Conservative Government—although I agree that it was insufficient—was criticised so savagely by the Labour Party that people believed that something better would be provided under a Labour Government.

What has happened? I have endeavoured, by Parliamentary Question and by letters to Ministers, to discover what has taken place. I find that nothing has changed. There is nothing new about the famous comprehensive investigation. All that is going on is a continuation of precisely the same Departmental review which was going on before the present Government came to power. I have asked for the name of the chairman and I have been told that there is no chairman because Departmental reviews do not have a chairman. When I asked for the names of the members I was told that they are generally civil servants in a Department. I have tried to find where the dramatic impetus is coming from, but there is none in terms of early remedial action.

I wish to say a word about what we should start to do. When the previous Government were in office I said the same things, quite rudely, and I think that one of the reasons why I secured an extremely effective majority at the last election was that the Minister of Housing and Local Government, in the previous Conservative Administration, said that I was the biggest nuisance in the Tory party on the subject of rates. Nothing could have done me more good in South Devon than such a remark as that.

There are several things that we ought to do. We should have a look at the present system of assessment. The extraordinary thing is that the more one examines individual cases of property assessment for valuation purposes the more one finds that there are anomalies. Something unique happened in my own constituency. Due to the persistence of my friends in local government in the area we discovered that Paignton was being reassessed in a different fashion from Torquay although the two places are next door to one another. Only when the reassessment had been completed was it discovered that at Paignton the reassessment had proceeded on an entirely different basis. The reassessment there had to be carried out all over again with a great deal of consequent confusion to local finance.

Time and time again it has been shown that assessments have been arbitrary and wrong in terms of comparison. We should be thinking about putting such things right. One could give thousands of examples where trained Treasury officials have been responsible for glaring discrepancies and anomalies even when operating under the existing law. There is a case for saying that if the burden has to be great it should at least be distributed fairly under the existing law. If trained revenue officers can be responsible for anomalies, one wonders how the tribunals will work when it comes to deciding rents, about which there is no experience.