HC Deb 04 March 1987 vol 111 cc983-9
Mr. Ancram

I beg to move amendment No. 155, in page 9, line 1, leave out subsections (6), (7) and (8) and insert— '(6) Persons who—

  1. (a) are married to each other and live together, or
  2. (b) live together as if they were man and wife
shall be jointly and severally liable for the personal community charges, relating to the period during which they live together, for which each of them is liable.'

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)

With this it will be convenient to take the following : amendment No. 166, in page 9, line 1 leave out subsection (6), and Government amendments Nos. 156 to 159.

Mr Ancram

These Government amendments stem from a commitment given in Committee following upon an amendment moved by, I think, the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) that we would consider further the provisions on joint and several liability for the personal community charge. The view was strongly expressed in Committee that unmarried couples whose household arrangements might in many cases be very similar to those of married couples, should also be made jointly and severally liable for the charge. On consideration, we have indeed reached the view that it should not be easier—at least potentially—for unmarried couples to be able to evade the payment of personal community charge than it will be for married couples. These amendments therefore give effect to that policy.

Apart from dealing with the basic position on joint and several liability in clause 10, they entail consequential amendment to clauses 15 and 22, and schedule 2. I shall deal with the amendments in the order that they appear in the Amendment Paper. Amendment No. 155 deletes the present provisions for joint and several liability of married couples in subsections (6), (7) and (8) of clause 10, and replaces them with the provision that married and unmarried couples who live together should be jointly and severally liable for the personal community charge.

The basic anticipated criteria by which it will be determined whether a couple are living together as man and wife will be similar to criteria used by the Department of the Health and Social Security at the moment. I shall deal with this is more detail shortly.

Amendment No. 156 provides that the joint and several liability of married and unmarried couples should not be included in the community charges register. While joint and several liability exists in all cases where a couple are married or living together, we do not propose that that liability should be invoked except when some difficulty has arisen over collection of the community charges due. The appearance of a note of joint and several liability in every case on the register would therefore be unnecessary, as well as involving the registration officer in complex and arguably intrusive inquiries of all couples at the stage when the register was being made up. That was a matter of concern to some Committee members. As a consequence, amendment No. 157 deletes from clause 22 the provision that any person shown on the register as jointly or severally liable to pay any community charge shall be entitled to inspect the entry in the register relating to each person with whom he is so liable. That no longer applies. We propose that the register will not in fact record any instances of joint and several liability, since in terms of amendment Nos. 52 and 56, which we will discuss later, there will no longer be any provision for joint and several liability between owners and tenants for the standard or collective community charges. Clause 22(2)(d) is therefore unnecessary.

Amendments Nos. 158 and 159 make the further changes that will be necessary to the procedures for recovery of community charges as a result of the extension of joint and several liability. They exclude the use of summary warrants for the recovery of arrears dependent on the joint and several liability provisions. Instead, the local authority must first raise a sheriff court action—ordinary action or summary cause—against the married or unmarried couple for payment of the outstanding charges. This will establish the joint and several liability. In the normal case, however, we expect that authorities will seek to recover arrears of community charges by the summary warrant procedure against the individual partner. Where that is unsuccessful, or where the authority has reason to believe that it would not be effective, it will, subject to paragraph 7(5) of schedule 2, be able, in the case of married or unmarried couples living together, to invoke joint and several liability and to pursue one partner's debts against the other partner. However, that will not be possible until it has raised an action and been granted a decree from the sheriff, as I have explained. In considering whether to grant a decree, the sheriff will take into account all the circumstances of the case, including the question of whether a couple who are not married are living together as man and wife. In this context a decision by a social security appeals tribunal that the couple should be jointly assessed for social security purposes may be of relevance.

These amendments have fallen consequent upon an amendment moved in Committee that rightly raised the difficulties and pressures that may be caused if married couples were treated differently from those who were living together but were not married.

Mr. Maxton

One of the points that COSLA raised with us was that by not including couples who were living together but not married we could create problems in terms of housing benefit.

Mr. Ancram

The housing benefit rules already cover that situation and will carry over in terms of the rebate provision that will be made available under this legislation.

This set of amendments, as they stand, cover the difficulties that may be caused where a couple who are living together but not married are in a position to evade payment whereas a married couple are not in such a position. Most Committee Members appreciated that that would cause problems and we all wished to avoid that.

As a result of the amendment so ably moved in Committee by the hon. Member for East Lothian, these amendments are now brought forward. I hope that they will find favour with the House.

Mr. Wilson

I welcome the changes made by the Government through these amendments. It would be wrong for a husband and wife to be treated in a different way from persons living together, and the Government have rightly accepted the arguments that were presumably made in Committee.

I have tabled amendment No. 166. I suspect that at this late stage of the proceedings, especially now that the other Government amendments have been made, there is little chance of persuading the Government to relax on the question of joint and several liability. However, I thought it worthwhile putting down a marker because if, as I understand it, the community charge is a personal tax, it should be payable by each person. The names should go individually on to the register. That is a matter of principle and it is what the Government should have provided for. I accept that the best way of proving the identity of persons living together is going against both parties in a sheriff court action, but I still do not agree with the principle.

11 pm

Mr. Ancram

The hon. Gentleman's first concern that they should not appear on the register as being registered jointly and severally liable is covered by the amendments.

Mr. Wilson

I took the point that the Government have improved on the situation through their amendments. I presume that the names of the persons who are allegedly living together will still appear on the register, as with husband and wife, although there will be no statement of whether there is liability.

Mr. Ancram

The register will have the names of every adult over 18 living at the address. Under the provision of the Bill before the amendments, a married couple would have had a distinguishing mark beside their name, probably the letters J and S, which would have signified that was joint and several liability and identified them as such. That is no longer necessary, so they will appear as names on a register against an address, just as everyone else on the register will.

Mr. Wilson

I was right to agree that the Government have chosen the correct mechanism to follow, although I disagree with the principle. It is always difficult coming in on Report, after matters have been exhaustively discussed in Committee. Although I do not press my amendment, I put down a marker, and express my opposition to joint and several liability, when the liability should be personal if the Government believe that accountability should be appropriate.

Mr. Henderson

I have two brief points to make. My hon. Friend the Minister will know that I met Fife regional council recently, and it has been having discussion within the Scottish forum for rating, valuation and other revenues. My hon. Friend will know that the forum is organised for the benefit of Scottish local authorities involved in rating, valuation and the collection of other revenues. Members include all regional councils, more than half the district councils, the Scottish special housing association and two of the three islands councils. I understand that in the main these authorities are represented by staff involved in revenue administration. Clearly, the Government will take some note of what such a body has to say.

The regional council, in line with that forum, expressed two major matters of concern to me. One was that all members of the forum had unanimously recommended that domestic rates be completely abolished with effect from 1 April 1989, and that the full community charges be introduced from that date. It is with great pleasure that I find that, within days of my carrying that message to my hon. Friend, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State announced just that policy. That will also be a great pleasure to the forum.

The other point put to me by Fife regional council was more directly related to this group of amendments. Amendment No. 155 replaces clause 10(6), (7) and (8) with a new subsection (6) which says: '(6) Persons who—

  1. (a) are married to each other and live together, or
  2. (b) live together as if they were man and wife
shall be jointly and severally liable for the personal community charges, relating to the period during which they live together, for which each of them is liable.' For a number of different reasons, Fife regional council was concerned that if the definition of what constituted a married couple in the Bill differed from that in the housing benefit regulations, a range of different administrative problems could arise. I understand that there will be new housing benefit regulations in April 1988, if not at any other time.

I am looking for an assurance from my hon. Friend the Minister that the Bill will be on all-fours and compatible with the housing benefit regulations, or vice-versa.

Mr. Hugh Brown (Glasgow, Provan)

Will the Minister clarify why it is necessary to have the principle of joint and several liability? If the register will not distinguish between a married couple and a couple living together, I do not see the need to define a couple. Surely individuals should have a distinct liability for the personal charge? Why can the Minister not give consideration to that aspect before we conclude these stages?

Mr. Home Robertson

We briefly covered this subject in Committee. The Minister rather eloquently described it as the bidey-in element, which had been suggested by COSLA. COSLA has come in for a certain amount of vilification from Ministers during debate on the Bill. I am glad that the Minister has, on this occasion, acknowledged that COSLA has drawn the attention of Parliament to a relevant and necessary amendment. I am grateful to the Minister for coming forward with this set of amendments, which clarify the position of unmarried couples living together as man and wife.

Following the point that was made by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson), we had quite a lot to say in Committee about the principle of joint and several liability. It rather undermines one of the fundamental principles that the Government have been laying much store by in putting forward their case for the community charge—every individual in Scotland over the age of 18 years should be liable to pay. The principle of couples being jointly and severally liable undermines a substantial part of that principle.

In an earlier debate the Secretary of State quoted a lot of figures about the alleged lack of accountability of local government in Scotland because, he claimed, relatively few people were ratepayers at present. That conveniently discounts the fact that a high proportion of people were the spouses of ratepayers, and if the two groups were put together they made a total of 79 per cent., which is hardly a minority.

I wonder what the comparable figures will be for the community charge in the future? Have the Government estimated how many couples will be jointly and severally liable? In effect, that means that only one of those partners will be paying the tax. The other member of those households will, by the Government's definition in their criticism of the rating system, be freeloading. The Government cannot have it both ways. I would be interested to know how many people they expect to fall into this category.

Mr. Wallace

It is always difficult to intervene on a matter which has been dealt with at length in Committee.

My point relates to the question of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Brown) about why we should have joint or several liability. I surmise that the reason why this has been put forward is ease of collection, to try to exclude one possible means of avoidance. If that is the case, it could lead to harshness, because, as I read the amendment that the Government are now seeking to substitute, the partners would be jointly and severally liable relating to the period during which they lived together. It is not sexist to say that the consequences of one partner leaving could be more harsh if the husband leaves the wife and goes to an unknown address. The bill for unpaid community charge could easily fall on the wife, why may have no earned income of her own and depend on the state.

I do not want to start a debate about taxes being seen to be fair, but I do not think that it will generally be thought fair to give a woman who has been deserted a bill for unpaid community charge for a period when she was not living alone. The Minister might say that payment would not be enforced in such circumstances. That merely reveals the inadequacies of the system and shows that it has not been fully thought through.

Mr. Ancram

The hon. Members for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) and for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Brown) asked why we should have joint and several liability. In certain circumstances, spouses and partners will have no assets of their own and their community charge liabilities therefore cannot be recovered. That was recognised in certain marriages and for people whom I described in Committee, as the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) has reminded me, as bidey-ins. Our proposals represent a reasonable approach to the problem.

I cannot envisage a sensible local authority trying to recover two charges from a partner with no assets, not least because it is for such a person's benefit that we are providing for joint and several liability. Recovery on that basis might not be possible. There is no system of taxation about which I could say, hand on heart, that there is 100 per cent. recovery, and I suspect that hon. Members could not either.

Our proposal for joint and several liability allows a local authority to try to recover a community charge from a partnership when one might have no identifiable assets from which recovery could be made, precisely because of the nature of the relationship.

Mr. Wallace

I understand the Minister's argument and accept that local authorities would sometimes not press home the charge in the circumstances which I suggested. That is a crucial admission that the House is being asked to accept a tax which is imposed on people who cannot pay it. That is a fundamental unfairness which we have identified.

Mr. Ancram

If the hon. Gentleman compares the amendments with the Bill, he will find that the Bill identifies a couple as jointly and severally liable from the start. Although they get separate bills, the hon. Member for Provan will remember from Committee stage that they will be in the register as jointly and severally liable.

The amendments create joint and several liability only when recovery has proved impossible on an individual basis. We have established that the authority goes through the process of recovery via the register. When that fails, or if the authority can see that that method will not work, it can go to the sheriff to have joint and several liability declared.

That answers what the hon. Member for Provan said. He said—it had not struck me until he said it—that the weakness in the Bill had been the application of joint and several liability before billing or recovery had arisen. That is met by the amendments, so I should have thought that they would go a long way to satisfy him.

11.15 pm
Mr. Maxton

What effect will the amendments have on rebates? If a husband is not jointly and severally liable for his wife's commuted charge, surely the wife is entitled to ask for a rebate on the basis of her income, with no relationship to her husband's income.

Mr. Ancram

I shall deal with rebates when I respond to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Henderson). The hon. Member for East Lothian raised the same issue in principle, and I would contend that his argument has been diminished by the amendments that have been placed before the House this evening. It would seem that he missed the opportunity to advance his argument when the issue was before the Committee. In any event, in the light of the amendments, his argument is a month too late.

The hon. Member for East Lothian asked about numbers, and I cannot tell him the number of married couples in Scotland. I can tell him, however, that there are about 50,000 unmarried couples living together in Scotland.

Dr. Godman

What is the position of a married couple who separate and continue to live under the same roof for some years before one of them leaves the domestic home?

Mr. Ancram

The hon. Gentleman will understand that subsections (6) and (7) are being replaced by the amendment. Subsection (8) states that the two subsections do not apply to persons who, although married to each other, are separated and live apart. That must be a matter of fact and circumstance in each instance.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, North-East for reminding us that the Rating and Valuation Association forum called for the ending of transition, which has been achieved in the Bill. My hon. Friend asked about the definition of "joint and several liability" in the terms of the Bill, and I suspect that his local authority is concerned about the rebate under clause 26 as against the housing benefit rebate provisions. The rebate system that is proposed under clause 26 will be a carry-forward, effectively, with the necessary adjustments under the housing benefit regulations. The housing benefit provisions for cohabiting couples will carry over into the rebate system, and there will be the relationship with the community charge. The concern to which my hon. Friend has referred has been expressed by a number of local authorities, but it does not come within the terms of the amendment.

The definitions of the joint and several categories within the Bill are slightly different from those within the Social Security Act 1986, but only in minor drafting terms rather than in any substantial way. The various applications of joint and several in respect of couples living together, whether married or unmarried, will have the same parentage although they might be slightly different in appearance from the provisions in the 1986 legislation. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, North-East is reassured.

Mr. Henderson

The definition should be sufficiently similar in the two sets of regulations so that the computer programme that is designed to handle one is able to handle the other. There lies the main problem.

Mr. Ancram

That is most important in terms of the support through the rebate schemes. Apart from possible slight variations, effectively they will be the same provisions. As to the definition used for collection, the sheriff will decide whether joint and several liability exists. It is likely that one of the matters to which he has regard is whether, under the social security provisions, the couple would have been so deemed to be cohabiting.

Mr. Kirkwood

Will the Minister assist me in clarifying the position of the sheriff when the local authority approaches him for a decision? In terms of the court's jurisdiction, will the sheriff he able to delay enforcement? Can he refuse to issue a declaration and, if so, in what circumstances? Does he have a choice?

Mr. Ancram

As I said when talking about amendments Numbers 158 and 159, just as in any other case, the local authority has to go to the sheriff—it will either be an ordinary action or a summary cause—to establish the joint and several liability. Each case will turn on its own facts. The decision will be the sheriff's. We expect that the main criteria will be similiar to those applied by the DHSS when it considers whether a couple should be jointly assessed for benefit entitlement. Obviously, the sheriff will wish to satisfy himself of that. It is right that the sheriff should take into account all the relevant circumstances of the particular case before deciding whether to grant a decree.

Mr. Kirkwood

Will that be enforced?

Mr. Ancram

The sheriff will be asked for a decree. He will decide whether to grant it. There is nothing especially complicated in that procedure. I hope that those hon. Members who invited us to table the amendment will accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

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