Scrap the Indefensible Tax

3.39.58pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 4th Oct 2005

Liberal Democrats have once more called for the Council Tax to be abolished following the jailing this week of a second pensioner. The stance of Sylvia Hardy from the South West has highlighted the anger felt by many elderly people across the UK. The first, Alfred Ridley, a 71-year-old retired vicar of Towcester, Northants, has just been released following a 28-day sentence at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes for refusing to settle his council tax bill.

People on Wales have already experienced a revaluation of the Council Tax which has thrown up even more anomalies to the discredited system. The Lib Dem MP for Cardiff Central Jenny Willott said:

"An example is in my own street. My next door neighbour is a 90 year old woman living on her own. She rents her house so can't even benefit from its increased value. Her income hasn't gone up and yet because the whole street has been re-banded she'll have to find the money to pay for the rise next year.

"Labour are doing nothing to address this inequity. If they were to adopt the Liberal Democrat policy of Local Income Tax, over 80% of pensioners would be better off."

The Liberal Democrats are now the only party with any sort of plan to resolve the Council Tax crisis. During the election campaign, Michael Howard told a press conference that: "Council Tax is the fairest form of local taxation there is." The Tories invented council tax and are determined the preserve it. Though the Conservatives are now warning that revaluation is only postponed rather than cancelled, their election pledge was also to postpone, rather than cancel, revaluation.

Because revaluation has been postponed, local tax bills will continue to be based on property values in 1991. By the time of the next General Election, those valuations will be nearly 20 years old. In the meantime valuation officers will have to base the council tax banding on thousands of new homes a year on an estimate of how much they would have been worth if they'd been built in 1991.

The Scottish Parliament has also postponed revaluation, pending the conclusions of a review of local government finance.

The local Lib Dem local spokesperson Mike Crockart said:

"Council Tax is Britain's most unpopular tax because it is the most unfair. It must be scrapped and replaced with a fair system based on ability to pay.

"The burden of this Tory tax falls disproportionately on the old and vulnerable, with the poorest pensioners paying as much as 10% of their income in Council Tax. Labour and the Conservatives both refuse to accept the whole Council Tax system is unsustainable. They are defending the indefensible."