Monday 7 January 2008

Local Taxes For Local People

Here and elsewhere, I have been known to advocate that the BBC Trustees be elected by and from among the license-payers, and various other public bodies (Ofcom, the Press Complaints Commission, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and others) be elected by and from among the ordinary general electorate, for fixed terms of four years and on some sort of regional basis, withe each of us voting for one politically independent candidate and the top two being declared elected at the end, with the Chairman appointed for the same term by the relevant Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee.

I continue to advocate this, and I have come to believe that, following the massive restoration of power to local government, such powers over it as would nevertheless need to be retained at the centre should be transferred to a Local Government Commission constituted on the same model. The question, then, is who should be eligible to vote and stand in elections to that Commission.

While local taxes are paid only by householders (and that on the massively unfair basis of the notional value of the home regardless of the means of the occupants (who might not own it, anyway), and even then with an exemption for those living in what should undoubtedly remain certain publicly subsidised housing, I cannot see why anyone not so liable should enjoy any such franchise.

Nor would matters be improved by the local income tax advocated by the Liberal Democrats and about to be introduced in Scotland, a simple payroll tax not levied on the rental incomes, share dividends, capital gains and inheritances on which Lib Dem and SNP voters subsist.

So I only ask: provided that the principle of accountability were not compromised by the peculiarly British practice of central capping (based on the pernicious falsehood that local government is spendthrift and profligate compared to central government, the opposite of the truth), and provided that payment were made through the benefits system for the very poor, might not everyone on the local electoral register be simply charged the same fixed fee determined by the council, and thus be entitled to vote and stand in elections to the Local Government Commission?

1 comment:

  1. Damn right. Only Trot-organised rioting did for this in the past. What way is that to govern?

    Thatcher was stupid about capping, dual running, phased introduction, transistional relief. But all of that could be avoided second time round.

    The benefits system would look after the genuinely poor, so the only people (relatively) worse off would be those who could easily afford it but who have never been required to pay anything up to now.

    Except when this was last attempted and they rioted, the key moment in the emergence of a British underclass that will not consider civic participation of any kind. This time, let's be ready for them.

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