HC Deb 14 November 1990 vol 180 cc569-70
9. Mr. Irvine

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has any plans to introduce a standard disaggregation formula which will identify separately the amounts being raised by county and district councils as regards the community charge.

Mr. Portillo

The proposed community charge bill for 1991–92 will be simpler and easier to understand. It will show more clearly than this year which are the overspending councils and which are the prudent ones.

Mr. Irvine

Is my hon. Friend aware that in Ipswich the Labour-controlled borough council and the Conservative-controlled county council are unable to agree for what share of the community charge they are respectively responsible? Does he appreciate that without a standard disaggregation formula there will continue to be such disputes and it will be that much more difficult to establish more accountability?

Mr. Portillo

The Bill that we propose to introduce next year will, I hope, meet my hon. Friend's concern. Had that Bill been enacted this year, it would have shown clearly that Suffolk council was responsible for 77 per cent. of the total spending by the authorities in my hon. Friend's area and that Ipswich borough council was responsible for an overspend of £97 on its standard spending assessment. That is nearly 100 per cent. more than it should be. If overspending of that kind continues next year—I hope that it will not—it will appear on next year's bills.

Mr. John Hughes

It is appropriate that the Minister referred earlier to the Coventry war experience. I draw attention to another aspect of the 1939–45 war. I wonder whether the Minister has read about the Nuremberg trails. If he has, he will have learnt that war criminals said that they tortured people to obey the law and that they murdered people to obey the law. Does the Minister agree that they were not obligated to obey an immoral law and that similarly no hon. Member is obligated to obey an immoral law and thus absolve himself or herself from responsibility to constituents suffering untold hardship as a result of the imposition of the poll tax?

Mr. Portillo

I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman's question has to do with the disaggregation formula. However, like other hon. Members, the hon. Gentleman is paid a salary by the taxpayers of this country in order to make laws. He is not paid a salary by the taxpayers of this country in order to break laws, or to urge others to break them.

Mr. Cormack

Do the very refreshing and enlightened remarks by the Secretary of State for Education and Science this morning suggest a new and realistic approach to the poll tax?

Mr. Portillo

My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) was one of those who were kind enough during the summer of this year to contribute to the Government's review of the community charge. That review is now complete. I thank my hon. Friend again for the very important contribution that he made to it.

Mr. O'Brien

Has not the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) highlighted yet again the problems and disadvantages of the poll tax? Is not it time for the Minister and his ministerial colleagues to line up behind the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and say, "Let's scrap it altogether?" When will they learn the lesson?

Mr. Portillo

First, my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has said no such thing. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) raised a serious point and got a serious answer. So far as I could judge from my hon. Friend's expression, he was satisfied with the changes made by the Government in the Bill as they were precisely the kind of things that he was looking for.