Mr Chairman, today we look to Conservatives in local government to perform tasks vital to our country's future.
To design and maintain their housing estates to reduce the reality and the fear of crime.
To clear up the litter and clean up the graffiti which determines the environment in which people live.
For if cleanliness isn't quite next to godliness, it's often next to order and good behaviour—and indeed conditions them. [end p1]
To work with parents and teachers in schools which shape our children's opportunities and influence standards and quality of life for future years.
And to do so economically.
For a sense of public service can't be measured by how far and frequently you dig your hands into the electors' pockets. And it's not the big spending socialist councils which deliver the highest quality services—far from it. [end p2]
Mr Chairman, whether you're a Minister or a Councillor, one thing you have the pleasure of doing is awarding the prizes at fetes, schools and competitions.
The prizes Labour councils strive to win are rather different.
There's first prize for rent arrears. Brent where rent arrears are about half of the total rent bill leads the field. With Liverpool, Lambeth and Manchester in with a chance. [end p3]
There's first prize for leaving council houses vacant—when so many people are short of homes. Here in London, five Labour councils have more than 9,000 empty properties between them.
There's first prize for obstructing home ownership. More than half the notices issued against councils which hold up sales of their homes to tenants were in Labour-controlled Lambeth, Hackney, Brent, Southwark and Hounslow. [end p4]
There's first prize for being less than helpful to the police. That's something for which the Labour Party really show a talent. Five Labour authorities were named by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner as refusing to participate fully in their local Police consultative groups.
And top of the class for poor education—first prize must go to ILEA with its over-spending councillors and under-achieving pupils; the HMI recently described a school in Hackney as one of the worst they had ever had to report on. [end p5]
And there's another prize we may soon be able to award. And that's to the first left-wing Labour Council which no longer wants to be twinned with a town in Nicaragua—now that country at last is free and democratic.
Labour councils now want to discredit the new Community Charge—their own Association of London Authorities said they should consider setting “the highest [charge] you can get away with” . And that is precisely what is happening. [end p6]
The rates had few friends—but they always appealed to the wasteful and extravagant Labour Councils. Because the old rating system enabled them to pass on the price of their policies to the minority who paid full rates and to business.
The rates were grossly unfair. 17 million people paid no rates at all leaving 12 million who paid rates in full—all too easy for those who paid nothing to vote for higher spending knowing that others would have to foot the bill. [end p7] A widow living alone paid the same as three or four adults next door, all earning good money.
And rateable values were grossly out of date. In Scotland, where they were seven years out of date, they were revalued. The result: a row which made Bannockburn look like a minor skirmish. Just imagine the effect in England after seventeen years. [end p8]
The Community Charge is designed to reveal the truth. To show local electors just what their local council spends. And how its performance compares with others.
The new Uniform Business Rate is designed to stop extravagant councils piling the burden onto business and driving out enterprise and jobs. It brings special help to the North. [end p9]
Our new system of local government finance is designed to stop high rates being used to subsidise council house rents.
Mr Chairman, the money raised from Community Charge pays for only about one quarter of Local Council spending. Just over a quarter is paid by the business rate. And all the rest comes from the taxpayer. So taking his Community Charge and taxes together, the well-off taxpayer pays far more for the same service than those on lower incomes. And that's only fair. [end p10]
And it's fair too, that those who are less well off will receive special help to pay their Community Charge. About one in four adults will receive a rebate. The new system is more generous than the present system of rate rebates.
Of course there are problems in the first year. We've tried to iron these out.
Transitional relief will bring help to those who face large increases as a result of introducing the Charge. And it is not means-tested. [end p11]
After the first year, councils will no longer have to bear the cost of the safety net.
And as Chris Patten has said, we will have a look at any fresh evidence about Standard Spending Assessments in time for next year's grant settlement.
This year the total money going to local councils from taxes and business rates combined is going up by 8½%;. Despite that, [Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1300 3 March 1990:] spending increases look like being so large on average that they would have caused a 35%; increase, in rates. [end p12] That represents three billion pounds extra spending—a sum equal to nearly 2 pence on income tax or 2 percentage points on VAT.
So it's not surprising that it has led to a bigger Community Charge. [End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1300 3 March 1990.]
And it's also not surprising that according to the Association of County Councils, the top ten County Council overspenders are all either Labour, Liberal or hung councils. [end p13]
Mr Chairman, too many councils build up reserves after one election to spend their way to victory just before another. And that's what some are doing this year.
Is it really reasonable, let alone necessary, to say to people:
“We're going to take money out of your bank account and put it into ours, so we can build up the interest. And if you've got an overdraft, well, we're still going to do it.”[end p14]
It's not surprising that people protest.
They should protest to the councils which are over-spending.
Protest to the Labour Party because I have yet to hear of one Council where the Labour Party is proposing a lower Charge than the Conservatives.
You can find no better contrast than between the charges planned by Labour Lambeth and next-door Tory Wandsworth: Wandsworth just announced at £148 and Lambeth talking about £600. [end p15]
Labour are still dithering about the details of what they'd like to put in place of rates.
It must have taken quite some effort for Labour to think up a worse system than the old one. It took three years for them to come up with any kind of policy at all. They looked like having one at the last election—but lost it half-way through the campaign. [end p16]
Then they hit on the brilliant idea of two taxes in place of one—a tax on the capital values of people's homes, whether or not they owned them. And a local income tax to drive out local talent. Now, apparently, they've more or less settled on a roof-tax.
But it's not just a tax on roofs. It's a tax on floors, windows and extensions. The more you improve your house, the more Labour would tax you. [end p17]
Everything that was bad with the rates the Labour Party wants to make still worse. For if there's one thing the Labour Party has always learnt from past mistakes—it's how to make still worse ones in the future. [Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 3 March 1990:]
The Community Charge will be fairer than either the rates or the roof tax. It's a chance to bring good and efficient services to millions at a reasonable cost, and it will make councils really accountable to local electors, or, as you put it, responsible to local electors. Indeed, that's what democracy is all about. [End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 3 March 1990.] [end p18]
Mr Chairman, let us raise our sights to the immense changes which are transforming our world.
The people who know socialism best, detest it most. They have learnt from bitter experience that under Socialism Government grows rich and the people grow poor. They know the poverty of Socialism.
Tyranny and bureaucracy throughout the world are falling before the growing demands of people-power. [end p19]
People want to be free to choose and to run their own lives.
That's true whether it's in Socialist Lambeth or in Socialist Leipzig. In Hackney or Havana. In Manchester or Moscow.
The British people want freedom for themselves and for their children. They want good value for the money they pay to central government and to local councils. [end p20] They want better standards in schools and to see the police supported. They want family values asserted and protected. And they want their children to grow up in a proud, secure and prosperous Britain.
Mr Chairman, we want these things too. They are the foundations of our Tory beliefs. It was this country which led the way in rolling back the frontiers of Socialism—a trend which many other countries are following. Let us continue with that vital task.