§ Lord Brougham and Vauxasked Her Majesty's Government
What further measures they intend to take to strengthen their powers to curb excessive local authority spending.
§ Baroness Blatch:Stronger capping powers are necessary to enable the Government to protect all chargepayers from excessive spending by local authorities. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his March Budget a fundamental and permanent shift from local to national taxation for the funding of local services. We are determined to ensure that in future the very substantial extra sums of money we are now providing are not wasted in higher spending by local authorities but continue to keep charges down to reasonable levels. All authorities must exercise restraint and play their part in the fight against inflation.
My right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Scotland and Wales have therefore decided to introduce before the Whitsun Recess a Bill to abolish the exemption from capping of English and Welsh authorities with budgets of less than £15 million, and to bring the Scottish capping powers into line with those which apply in England and Wales. If approved, it would, inter alia, enable my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for the first time to cap an authority whose year-on-year increase in expenditure he considered to be excessive.
9WAThe Bill will also contain provisions enabling properties to be allocated to bands in preparation for the introduction of the new Council Tax from 1st April 1993.
10WACorrection
As a result of an error, a figure mentioned by the Lord Palmer in his speech on Animal Carcasses: Hygienic Disposal on 15th May 1991 (col. 1726, last paragraph) was incorrectly reported. The figure should have been 195,000 rather than 195 tonnes and the sentence in question should have read:
"We are talking about 195,000 tonnes of material per annum, produced by 1.4 million casualty animals."