“It’s a fairness thing. He just thought someone sitting in a two-bedroom house in Hartlepool would pay more council tax than someone who lives in a mansion – it’s just shocking.
The Work backbencher Jonathan Brash, Hartlepool’s MP, is on a mission to point out what he jokingly calls “the third scandal of British politics” – which no mainstream party, including his own, wants to touch for fear of electoral death.
Brash, a former teacher, bravely (perhaps audaciously) reformed the all-party parliamentary group for tax reform. They point to the madness of correct discipline.
People who live in Band H properties in Hartlepool pay £4,755 a year in council tax. For the same cohort in Westminster the figure is £1,946.32.
It is hardly necessary to say, however, that the value of the most expensive properties in the borough of London will be several times that of their equivalent in Hartlepool. A quick search revolves around a nine room, front roof in Westminster house on the market for £45*; in Hartlepool, £1.5m to buy you a a seven-room manor housesitting on two acres.
Aimed to replace the ill-received poll tax, which hit wages and sparked local riots – and contributed to Margaret Thatcher’s ouster – the council tax is one of the few wealth cuts in the UK. But he boldly points out two sources of iniquity. The first is the one that will make all right-minded economists tear their hair out: the tax plan is incurably regressive because it is stuck in a time warp.
As angry note from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, local economic expert David Phillips pointed out that during the general election campaign, assets have not been cleared for tax purposes since 1991, “when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union and Chesney Hawkes had papers with The One and Only”.
Since then, according to the IFS, house prices have risen sevenfold in London, and less than fourfold in the East.
The same nonsense appears across the UK. Wales introduced an extra band for the most valuable assets, and it was assessed in 2003, but has not been since. Scottish Empire proposed, but ultimately abandoned, reforms.
The second kind of iniquity is that of which the council considers the tax. Local authority regions have been increasingly pressured over the past decade, but the demand for some of the services for which councils have statutory responsibility, including children and adult social care, has risen inexorably.
That means an increase in the economic proportion – two thirds, on average; according to the Local Government Association – is spent on these vital services, which the majority of citizens do not need (at least for now) or perhaps even see, while the more visible local services are corrupted.
“What you’re doing is breaking the bond between the tax and the work that’s being done with that money,” he said boldly.
“It’s the fabric society that threw it down. It’s the street that doesn’t get cleans, the bin that doesn’t get collected as often, the library that doesn’t get looked after as well. It’s because people mix with their area, who suffer.”
Just how politically intractable the tax plan remains was demonstrated again in the election campaign, when the Tories proceeded to challenge Labor over any proposed tax increase.
Rachel Reeves initially refused to order a revaluation, which at least would have helped make the tax more progressive. But with the Conservatives taking advantage of Labour, Jonathan Ashworth went to the front, losing his Leicester south seat; He ruled him firmly.
So there are at least two intertwined issues that fall into the category of “too difficult” for politicians, as does the new Labor government with the health sector.
It is one absurdly inexplicable system of public policy, which is a side effect of the long property boom in recent decades, which has pushed the wealth of those fortunate enough to be thrown into the limelight.
Labor promised a lot of work overhaul of the congressional funding formulainclined towards the most despoiled places. He also published radical proposals for the reorganization of local government. But neither is expected to include tinkering with the tax plan, let alone a move toward something that looks like a progressive property tax.
It is a genuine political challenge. Center for Cities thinktank they had recently suggested two-thirds of households could be saved per year if Councils were allowed to set up a more gradual plan at a local level – to introduce two more links above. Others, of course, would give punishments, and to reform the vanquished by someone, the victors are wont to cry out more loudly.
There is another neglected question social care fundingwhich labor
A move to something that looked more like social insurance, more of a risk that falls on fewer unfortunate families, may help to ease the burden on local authorities here. The long-term employment policy of the National Care Service is here to help.
But again, reform is considered politically dangerous (or expensive). New in the political memory of Theresa May is the insistence that “nothing has changed” as the one that was seized to rewrite the social care policy in 2017.
The political caution on both sides is completely understandable. Nevertheless, it leads to a situation in which we tolerate a system that is clearly unjust, and threatens to completely undermine the support of public policy; and that certainly carries its own political risks.
As Brash puts it about his Hartlepool constituents, who raise the issue with him on the threshold: It’s not good.”