As party conference season draws to a close, it is the Lib Dems who – perhaps unsurprisingly – have been the most vocal on local issues.
Even public service integration was given a boost in its document on Protecting Public Services. It called for cross-service working without structural change to cut costs.
It also includes plans for a cross-public services graduate trainee programme and a ‘Hippocratic Oath’ for non-medical public servants. I’m not sure if that doesn’t already exist in the ‘public sector ethos’ that so many people feel – but is the public aware of how deep it runs?
Business secretary Vince Cable has also rubbished Conservative fiscal plans, describing proposals to take £25bn more out of welfare and unprotected budgets as ‘fantasy’. No news there for local government, which would feel the weight of these cuts from both ends.
But the Lib Dems have hit council tax square on. Having been in the Treasury for a few years, Danny Alexander has now dismissed previous plans for a ‘mansion tax’ – now taken up by David Miliband as the next big thing – as unworkable. Instead, he has called for more top rate bands to make the system fairer.
I’m all in favour of upgrading the council tax system, but would probably argue for a regional banding. The current system causes as many difficulties in Liverpool – where house prices are cheap – as it does in London, at the other end of the scale.
But to update the council tax system, a full property revaluation would also be needed. It is now nine years since David Miliband ‘postponed’ revaluation – and it was well overdue then.
Subsequent secretaries of state have shied away from revaluation fearing the political fall-out – and who can blame them? My solution is simple: pass the whole problem down to local government, carry out revaluation at a local level and hand over the power to add in extra bands.
