IT'S NONSENSE TO CALL THIS A RETURN OF THE POLL TAX

First published by: The Guardian

This bill gives councils more control of their budget and the power to generate more revenue themselves.

Polly Toynbee calls our benefit reforms a "social injustice" She must be living in cloud cuckoo land. While Labour was in power, Council Tax benefit bills doubled, fostering a culture of welfare dependency, and public debt spiralled out of control. 

The coalition was formed to set it back on course by getting public finances under control again, giving people more power, and creating new conditions for growth. The local government finance bill, labelled "idiocy" by Toynbee, achieves all three. 

Toynbee says that, "from next April, the benefit is cut by 10%". Yes, because of that financial mess left behind we've had to ask councils to make a small 10% saving when they take charge. But she then says, "Each council must choose who is 'vulnerable'" and "people who live in areas with a lot of pensioners or a lot of the 'vulnerable' will suffer the biggest cuts, as much as 30% or more". 

She calls it "a lottery". But a quick check of government policy shows we are putting councils in charge because they can better target local needs. It makes perfect sense for councils to control who gets support, because Council Tax is a local tax. Councils set it. Councils send out the bills. Councils collect it. You actually have to ask yourself why it was ever remotely controlled by Whitehall in the first the place.

Ms Toynbee claims each council must "become a mini DWP" and "must collect smallish sums from millions of families who have never paid before, with new billing and recovery processes". But councils already administer the benefit, so they have the expertise to successfully take full control and keep disruption to a minimum.

And is Toynbee really saying she does not trust local councils – including 100-odd Labour councils and 6,500 Labour councillors – to provide Council Tax support fairly? We know councils are much better at finding efficiency savings than Whitehall. I know many are using that local know how to look across their whole budgets to do so. And money is available from £60bn spent on procurement, or the £2bn lost to fraud, or even the £10bn kept in reserves.

The bill also gives councils more control of their budget and the power to generate more revenue themselves, which could be used for Council Tax support. This new local growth incentive could add £10bn to our GDP and will end the begging-bowl handout humiliation that proud councils endure every year.

Toynbee also, rather out of character, bemoans state protections for elderly and vulnerable people. This government, unlike the Labour party, has no intention of letting councils end support for single-person households. It would hit 8 million people with a new tax rise. That would be the history-repeating she decries. Surely she must agree that we should not punish vulnerable single mums or the fixed-income pensioners who have contributed a lifetime of work and taxes already, simply because they live alone.

This bill is vital for the country's future. It will restore the confidence of hardworking taxpayers in the Council Tax support system by making it a fairer one, a local-run one, and a more affordable one - one where residents get local help to find employment and where work pays.

READ WHAT: ERIC PICKLES ‘SECRETARY OF STATE’ SAYS ABOUT OVER-CHARGED COUNCIL TAX

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