No, not yet, so we can presume it is still his view.

It is a correct view, because it is in line with the poll tax principles enunciated by Conservative Members, who said that it was supposed to bring accountability. The basis of the poll tax has failed. The Government also failed in setting an average poll tax of £360.

The Secretary of State and Conservative Members have admitted that the standard spending assessment is flawed and will have to be revised. I hope that the eventual review of the poll tax will include a clear statement about improving the formula for SSA and its distribution. Without that there can be no accountability and no judgment by local people about a reasonable level of efficiency.

The poll tax is flawed on the issue of fairness about what people pay and what they get. The Secretary of State has admitted that the assumptions on which the grant allocation was made were also faulty, because the amount that local authorities spent this year, and were predicting to spend, was £3.8 billion greater than the assumptions for grants.

Above all, the Government have failed on the cap itself. As we spelt out yesterday, because of the difficulty that is being experienced in collection, the cuts will not be made on poll tax ceilings. Last week the Municipal Journal conducted a survey which showed that, while there would. be a £216.7 million cut in poll tax, an increase in collection difficulties would cost authorities £327 million in uncollected tax. That is a crazy way to organise a supposed cut in taxation and action against inflation, which is one of the arguments that has been advanced in the debate.

Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) said that Brent people would be dancing in the streets. They may dance in the street for another reason. because a recent ICM poll puts Labour 16 per cent. ahead of the Conservatives. That would justify people dancing in the streets. They certainly will not dance to celebrate increased bureaucracy and higher administrative costs or to rejoice at having experienced 11 years of local authority cuts, penalties, grant reductions and changes in the assessment levels.

Some authorities such as Islington are being capped simply because of the change in the grant-related assessment formula relative to the standard spending assessment, and the difference between the SSA in November and the one in January. That is a crazy way to hold people to account for determining what happens to their services.

It is unmistakable bias to cap authorities such as Calderdale, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham, which have below-average poll tax levels. That is inexplicable to an authority such as Calderdale which had imposed upon it a poll tax of £244, which is fourth from the bottom. The tax in Windsor and Maidenhead is £449 and authorities throughout Surrey and Buckinghamshire have poll tax levels that are double those being imposed in other areas. What sort of services are some authorities expected to provide compared with those provided in the south-east?

The hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) said that none of us is affected by the cap, but he has missed the point. Of course we can afford to pay the poll tax, we are all recipients of services and some of us actually send our children to state schools. We know exactly what poll tax capping will mean to those who will have their education services reduced. Many people have elderly parents and cannot afford to place them in the most prestigious private residential homes and would not want them to be in such places. Those people want their elderly parents to be supported in the community by day centres, home helps and special aids and adaptations and by the range and choice of services that local authorities now provide. Councils do that by spending on services.

That is what the debate should have been about, but in his hour long peroration yesterday the Secretary of State did not talk about services at all. The debate is not about poll tax levels, which vary enormously and the highest of which have not been capped. The debate is about whether the Government will inflict their cuts and their ideology on those who failed to vote Conservative in the local elections. All the mumbo-jumbo that we heard yesterday about court cases and the football match where penalties were taken during the game rather than after extra time and in which the goalkeeper was removed by the referee so that the other side could win is irrelevant.

The Secretary of State has said that he determines what is excessive. That is like "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" where words mean what one says they mean. He is saying to children and parents that they will have the standard of education that he determines and not the one that they want.

I have been invited to speak at Roedean, and I have carried out research into that school. The fees are £2,700 a term and there are incidental expenses for music and sporting activity. I do not know what those things cost, but altogether the charges are certainly more than £2,700 a term. The average state secondary school cost is between £1,500 and £2,000 a year. We can also compare what people want for their children. It has already been said that the average cost to us all of assisted places is £3,400, and that people receive charitable relief on the money that they spend on their children's education. All that we demand is that people should be allowed to choose for themselves, but the Government have decided to choose what is right for those people and their parents and families. They must have decent standards of service.

The people that we represent cannot opt out and buy in the private market, or discard public service; they are dependent on the level of service provided by their local authority. Millions of people throughout the country will be affected by what is happening tonight. They will have their services reduced without any choice and without the right to decide. To take away the ballot box is to take from most people the last vestige of control over what happens to their own lives in their own community, because they do not have the wealth to use their money as their vote in the market place.

The debate is about ideology—I do not duck that issue —and about decisions on what happens to individual men and women. It matters to every one of us. Conservative Members who have spoken gave the game away. Eulogising about the cutbacks in Hillingdon, the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) admitted that £2.5 million would be cut from the £32.8 million budget of the social services committee. He may think that he is speaking for Hillingdon council, but some of us would like to feel that we have a right to speak for the elderly and infirm people who will suffer from a 7.5 to 8 per cent. cut in services. Even the hon. Gentleman admitted that, under the present standard spending assessment, it would not be possible for Hillingdon council to reduce the community charge without changing the level of services provided—that is a euphemism for cutting services.

The hon. Gentleman went on to say that there would probably be some job losses. I think that that is a considerable underestimate. What is more, he announced that there would be an increase in education spending. I mention Hillingdon only because it is being held up as a paragon of virtue. Hillingdon is doing what the Secretary of State for Health has been doing: it is cutting education services to pretend that it is spending more money on them. The policy is to close schools, cut adult education and increase charges, then spend slightly more on other schools and proclaim the cut as not a cut but an increase in service. That is what the Department of Health is doing across the country.

Above all—my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) mentioned this—the idea of chopping the community care proposals to try to lower poll tax levels by an average of £15 a head is a shoddy, shabby move, and one that I hope that the Government will come to regret. It affects the people who most need help. Their needs do not go away; their problems do not change; their family pressures do not alter because they happen to be saving £15 on the poll tax.

The daftest thing of all is the formula on which our authorities receive their grants to provide our services. There is something called the social deprivation index—it is known officially as the all-ages social index. On that are predicated the decisions about what authorities will receive. Can anyone imagine an index that has as the worst off those authorities that have benefited most from Government aid in one form or another, and penalises those in the most rundown industrial parts of the country? According to an answer given on 27 June, Wandsworth was eighth in the index, Kensington and Chelsea ninth and Westminster 12th; Rochdale was 45th, Calderdale 77th and St. Helens 87th. Barnsley, which was 172nd on the list, is poll tax-capped and penalised. While the people of Cheltenham can live in comfort with adequate grant to look after their gardens, Barnsley, Rotherham, North Tyneside and St. Helens face cuts in education and social care on an ideological whim of the Prime Minister's, imposed by the Secretary of State.

There is an alternative: it is democracy. There should be no cuts, no capping and no erosion of the right to decide locally on services, but a removal of central authoritarianism and of the right to decide from the House of Commons and from Whitehall. A decision must be taken to put back that which we have all fought to achieve—the right to choose for oneself.