Council Tax Valuation Bands Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-09-11
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Brooke (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who speaks in the midst of a sea of Conservative Back-Benchers. It is not the first time that the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for the solitary has embraced me. During the 2001 general election, he was the only Peer in a British IPU delegation to a great jamboree in Havana to dance the salsa. I fear neither my noble friend Lord Fowler nor myself followed him in that experience This is going to be a brief speech for reasons irrelevant to this Bill but since a Second Reading debate is on the principle of the Bill in question, I wanted to support my noble friend Lord Marlesford. I was one of the relatively few Members of your Lordships’ House present just over eight weeks ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, launched the dress rehearsal for this debate with her Amendment 75A to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill on 15 July, as my noble friend Lord Sherbourne has already mentioned. That Bill was in the charge of my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford, who of course is here today to respond for the Government The subject of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was broadly the same as today’s—council tax bands—and would have committed the Secretary of State to consult with local authorities before laying, "before each House of Parliament a report on the introduction of additional higher bands of council tax in England for the areas of combined or local authorities which may assume additional functions under the provisions of this Act" The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, alluded in her remarks to my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s creative endeavours in this area, and he immediately followed her; he was immediately followed by my noble friend Lord True, who is speaking today as well. There is a marked overlap of dramatis personae in these matters I am not proposing to retrace our steps on that terrain today—they occurred in a somewhat different context and anyone who was not present can read the debate for themselves. My noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford made it clear in her response that she would reserve her comments on our noble friend Lord Marlesford’s speech until today. Her remarks were understandably less than the full exposition of Her Majesty’s Government’s case to which we look forward today. I support my noble friend Lord Marlesford today because his Bill is characteristic of his admirable trait of getting inside a genuine issue that for a variety of reasons has not received the recent scrutiny it deserves. Other examples of his persistence are outside the scope of this debate but they all occur in a manner directly reflecting the essence of this Chamber’s function as a scrutinising and revising body, and he deserves the approbation of your Lordships’ House at large. He has defined the problem in an admirably comprehensive speech. He has also sought to present imaginative and ingenious legislative remedies which would ameliorate a state of affairs that will deteriorate further if a searchlight is not shone upon it I can guess the outline of the Government’s case, which I suspect will owe not a little to the legendary Fabius Maximus Cunctator. I am happy to serve as a member of the infantry in my noble friend’s troop of interested supporters, and this debate, whatever the outcome, will have been a very worthwhile illumination of an issue that will fester unhelpfully if it is not further attended to. In the mean time, we are all in my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s debt.