The local government finance legislation, which was passed a year ago, and the failure of the challenge in the courts, which proceeds day by day, clearly demonstrate that there is no question but that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is right to bring forward the orders and to ask hon. Members to vote on them today. I make it quite clear that I shall support my right hon. Friend in the Lobby. One could even make the case that he has been quite lenient in the number of councils that he has capped, and not only in respect of the numbers but in the extent to which he has capped some of them.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground) rightly said, if we examine the level at which some authorities have been capped and consider the difference between that level and their SSA expenditure per head, we shall note that there is a huge disparity. In other words, even if the ruling party in any of those authorities had set a level just below the cap and the Opposition had suggested a spend more equitable to the SSA, it would still have presented their electorates with a wide choice of what to vote for.

In the London borough of Hillingdon we have seen a practical illustration. The Conservative opposition are actually saying that the cap is over-generous. Now that they have taken power from the socialists—the people of Hillingdon have far more sense than the people of Lambeth—they themselves will be setting a community charge of £25 a head lower than the figure that my right hon. Friend suggested.

It is worth thinking about all the authorities that have not been charge-capped and whether, in future, it will be worth my right hon. Friend considering capping other authorities. Clearly, the impediment to doing that at the moment, and the reason why we are considering only 21 authorities, is the £15 million floor level on revenue budget, which determines whether an authority can be eligible for my right hon. Friend's scrutiny. For example, my local authority, Thurrock, is overspending by, according to my right hon. Friend's Department, £75 a head. On my calculation, when we include extra overcharging for the excuses of costs of collection and non-payment, it is overcharging by £91.77 per charge payer. On the Department's figures, the borough is overspending by 85.4 per cent. On my figures, if we take the overspend of nearly £92 a head, the percentage overspent is considerably more than 85.4 per cent.

Although we are not considering an order to cap my local authority, it and many others like it are massively overspending and probably employing twice as many people as they need and are not contracting out services to the private sector. Thurrock is seeking to build phase 3 of its office block development. According to one of my local papers, that could add anything between an extra £8 and £62 to the charge that each of my constituents must pay. Clearly, there is a strong case for removing the £15 million floor level and capping far more authorities. However, if my right hon. Friend does that, he should not cap any authorities to any great extent. There are three reasons for that.

First, although the concept of local government democracy is fine, in practice it is seriously flawed. In fact, the reality of local government democracy today is farcical. If my right hon. Friend caps more councils, he should do so in a limited sense. That would at least send a message from him and the Government that there is support for people living in those areas and that the Government are prepared to step in and make sure that excessive spending is curbed. It would show also that the Government were on their side and were not leaving the matter purely to the mechanism of the community charge and the accountability that would be increasingly associated with it.

Secondly, if, in each instance, the cap is not great, and, to be fair, it is not in many of the local authorities that we are considering today, it would not wreck the principle of accountability—in other words, a small cap in terms of depth. As my hon. and learned Friend has said, it is unquestionable that the principle of accountability is clearly not diminished.

Thirdly, we should not provide a political hostage to fortune. In the 21 authorities and others that are being capped, and in others that would be capped if the £15 million floor level was removed, the socialists in those administrations and perhaps in some Tory administrations, to protect their empires and bureaucracies would say that they would cut services that residents were receiving rather than cut their own gross inefficiencies and overmanning.

Local government has enjoyed a massive increase in expenditure, year on year in real terms, not only prior to 1979 but even—sadly—since the Government came into power. Although there are genuine exceptions and some local authorities do a good job and are efficient, I submit that the vast majority are extremely inefficient and are ripping off their community charge payers as, in the past, they ripped off their ratepayers left, right and centre.

As well as considering an alternative to extending community charge capping, I ask my right hon. Friend to consider an even more radical alternative and to provide the people of any local authority area with the ability to cap that authority themselves. Perhaps my right hon. Friend could consider introducing a mechanism whereby, if any local authority sought to spend more than the SSA set down by the Secretary of State, it would have to ratify that by a binding local referendum before the expenditure and the budget could be implemented.

That would give the people of the area a real choice. It would refine and extend the accountability principle of the community charge. It would mean that the local people could answer one specific and simple question in the ballot box—do we or do we not agree with the Budget that our locally elected councillors have set for our authority? The local people would have the opportunity either of agreeing and ratifying those spending plans, or of capping the authority themselves and asking it to think again. That would be an interesting and workable extension of the principle of accountability in local government.

Although, as I have said, the concept of local government democracy is fine, today its delivery is seriously flawed. After all, local government exists purely to deliver services. It receives half its revenue, not from the local population, but from central Government. It receives another quarter of its revenue from businesses, which do not have a vote or a say in who is elected to run the local authority. Although some people will obviously change their allegiance when they vote in local elections because of what is going on locally from the party for which they voted nationally, the vast majority of people vote in a local election according to their normal political tribal instincts or because of what is happening nationally.

The percentage turnout also varies between the number who turn out to support the Opposition and those who support the Government. I am not making a party political point because, when the Labour party was in government in the 1960 and 1970s, it suffered from that when it lost seats in local government hand over fist, and we have suffered the same reverse in the 1980s. The way in which people vote in local elections often bears little resemblance to what is happening or to the key issues affecting the local authority. It bears far more resemblance to what is happening nationally.

In conclusion, although I believe that my right hon. Friend should consider some radical alternatives, he is absolutely right to introduce the orders both in moral and in legislative terms. I shall support them.