§ Mr. Gordon Brown (Dunfermline, East)With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to present a petition on behalf of Dunfermline district council in the name of the provost, Councillor Mill. The petition protests against the proposed implementation of the community charge, or as it is properly known, the poll tax, which is considered unfair, unjust and inequitable in my constituency. It will make 30,000 of my electors worse off, is a clear intrusion on the civil liberties of those electors and has no supporters in Scotland outside the Conservative party. The petition states:
Wherefore your petitioners pray that your Honourable House shall take immediate steps to repeal the legislation which introduces the poll tax-community charge and remove the burden of unfair taxation which the people of Scotland firmly rejected in the June 1987 election and replace this proposed regressive tax system with a method for raising local revenues to meet the justified needs of local expenditure more in keeping with justice and with equity.It gives me pleasure on their behalf to bring the petition to the House and ask that the Government take seriously what is said within it.
§ To lie upon the Table.