Corbyn’s council tax dilemma – Jack Airey writes for the MJ
Localis research fellow Jack Airey writes for the MJ on Scottish Labour’s council tax reforms and what the national party could learn from them. You can read the piece in full here or below.
For all the promises of radical new ideas, ‘effective opposition’ and unrelenting loyalty to policy over politics, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has developed disappointingly little in the way of an alternative policy agenda since his election last year.
His supporters would probably point to any announcements being drowned out by internal wrangling, but the dearth of policy is hard to escape.
Local government is a case in point where, beyond the probably accurate if directionless charge of ‘you’re devolving the cuts’, little to no new direction has been laid out.
In this regard as Mr Corbyn and co. continue to tread water, they would do well to look to their colleagues north of the border for inspiration (as well as, needless to say, to the councils run by Labour councillors).
Scottish Labour has pledged to completely reform the country’s council tax system, carrying out a revaluation which was last done in 1991 and give Scottish councils the power to levy tourist taxes and a land value tax on vacant and economically inactive land.
These pledges follow a Scottish cross-party commission on local tax reform which described how the current system simply ‘cannot go on’. And in an era of SNP government which is seen to have centralised power, they are relatively radical.
The party’s proposed reforms are, of course, far from perfect. Scottish local authorities should, for example, be able to determine their own bands and rates of council tax rather than Holyrood. Moreover, actually completing a revaluation will be easier said than done.
But the proposals are reflective of a debate on local taxation that is in a very different place to that which we have in England.
Where the most substantial reform to council tax over the past decade or so has been the belated introduction of a social care precept.
In the past year Mr Corbyn has been called a lot of things of which a localist is probably not one of them.
However in asking a question of fundamental equality (why is the range of council tax so much narrower than range of income?) he could begin to drive the devolutionary agenda – or at least look like he is interested in it.
Like has been done in Scotland, Labour could set up a commission into what constitutes as fair in terms of local taxation.
Alternatively the party could push the chancellor to give some or all authorities the power to create extra council tax bands. Above anything though, the party could at least start the debate.
If Scotland can, why can’t England?