I have given the hon. Gentleman the facts. If St. Helens were not receiving help from the safety net and in grant, the charge would have been £433. That helps to illuminate a point that seems to have troubled the House—why charge capping is compatible with accountability. It is because, in the first year, when the Government arranged for many authorities to be protected by those special arrangements—I am not even mentioning for the moment the transitional relief which goes to the charge payer—it is not clear to the electorate how high those community charges are. It has been demonstrated today that that is not clear to hon. Members either. They do not understand how high the community charge is in their areas.

We took the criterion of spending 12.5 per cent. above the new assessment of needs, the SSA. That 12.5 per cent. was in line with the same criterion that we used in the case of rate capping over many years. It can hardly have been a surprise to anybody that we used SSAs as the basis for capping, because SSAs were designed with great care to represent the needs of local authorities. Haringey's director of finance issued a report dated 2 March 1990 in which he said that the council must be extremely vulnerable to be subject to community charge limitation on the basis that the £573 may be considered to be excessive. The treasurer apparently knew, so I do not know why the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) thought that it would be a surprise.

The assumed community charge, as was made clear by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, was not the basis of capping; it was the basis on which the Government gave welcome and valuable help to people to compensate them for the change from rates to the community charge. It took account of massive overspending by local authorities under Labour control in the past. Now the Labour party seeks to ram down our throats the fact that we made a realistic transitional relief provision based on that overspending. But we also made it perfectly clear that that would not be the basis on which we would cap.

Counsel representing Derbyshire county council in the courts recently made it perfectly clear that he was not accusing the Government of political bias, so I am surprised that Opposition Members have sought to run that one. If counsel representing Derbyshire made it clear that he was not accusing the Government of that, I do not know why Opposition Members seek to do it here. Perhaps it is because the standards of proof here are less rigorous than in a court of law.

My next question is: are the caps attainable? The hon. Member for Dagenham gave the game away entirely when he said that, if the local authorities had known in advance how charge capping was to apply, the vast majority of charge-capped authorities would have had no difficulty in avoiding the cap level.

The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) said: I know that my party's group in St. Helens … believes that it can provide the same level of service for the lower amount."—[Official Report, 11 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 350.] Apparently it can be done in St. Helens.

My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson) said: there was and still is a budget on the table that would bring Calder Valley's expenditure down to a figure below the charge-capped rate with no loss of services or jobs."—[Official Report, 11 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 373.] My hon. Friends the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Hayward) and for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) made similar points. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) explained how Hillingdon today had better management techniques and had abolished all those unwelcome committees that consume money.

If the SSAs were wrong, one would think that other authorities in the north of England would have had difficulty in staying close to them. But Bradford is only 3 per cent. above its assessment of need, Manchester is only 3.9 per cent. above its assessment of need, having said some months ago that it would be 30 per cent. above, and Conservative-controlled Trafford is 2.6 per cent. below our assessment of what it needs to spend.

It is clear that our assessments of need are not wrong, the criteria are not wrong—it is the spending which is excessive. That point was made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman), who both said that the Government were using their powers moderately.

Why should the Government choose to cap at all? First, the Government must have a view about the level of public spending. That point was extremely well made by my hon. Friends the Members for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) and for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind). The hon. Member for Dagenham ignored the point and the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), who is a member of the Labour Treasury team, is mystified by the point, which gives me some misgivings about the conduct of their financial policy.

Secondly, we need to protect the charge payer. The hon. Member for Dagenham recognises that capping is needed in extremis. The hon. Member for Southport said: There is much argument about whether reserved powers to cap are ever justified and, although I am in danger of contradicting myself, I suppose I must come down in favour of such powers."—[Official Report, 11 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 348.] He was absolutely right. It is a point that was well made.

Why so? Because it is clear that some authorities have taken advantage of the changes in the system in order to blame the high levels charged on the Government and the change in the system, not on their high spending. Some authorities—many of my hon. Friends talked about Derbyshire—clearly face no election in the foreseeable future, so they felt that they could pile on the charges. Many authorities were receiving special help with the charges—the safety net payments and the grants made for low rateable value—so the community charge was distorted. Many boroughs expected to win the coming elections out of a misplaced traditional loyalty to Labour whatever they did and in many places large numbers of electors faced reduced charges because of the benefit that they were receiving, which was much more generous under the community charge than under the rates and because of transitional relief.

None of that took account of the charge payer. It was only Conservative Members who mentioned the interests of the charge payer. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Sir W. Shelton) said that he felt desperate on behalf of the charge payers of Lambeth. My right hon. Friend for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) said that many people were brought into penury by the heavy rates and the community charge in Brent. In other words, the problem did not begin with the community charge, but long ago with the rates.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Carrington) said, thank goodness the Government had not messed about with a small reduction. He wanted a £99 reduction because that was £198 per couple in his constituency. My hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) and for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) made similar points. Our concern has always been with the charge payer. We have heard nothing at all throughout the debate from Labour Members about the concerns of the charge payer.

I have no doubt that the community charge will achieve its objective of increasing local authority accountability. We have seen that already in the moderate increases in Scotland in the second year. We have seen it in London, not only with the defeat of left-wing Labour councils at the recent elections, but also in the relative moderation which has been shown by one or two Labour and SLD-controlled councils which have been concerned about re-election and have set lower charges.

In time, the effect that we have seen in Scotland and in London, affecting not only Conservative boroughs but Labour ones too, will spread to the rest of the country. But for the moment there are factors that obscure accountability—the special grants that I have talked about and the safety net; the changes that have been made to the system, giving boroughs the opportunity to blame the system, not their own overspending; the counties not facing election, and the fact that the counties are not seen as responsible for the level of spending for which they are in fact responsible. Some councils this year have abused those factors in order to impose swingeing burdens on their community charge payers.

Some councils are clearly planning to do the same next year, but we give this promise. The Government will not stand idly by and let that happen. The Government must protect the community charge payers, because we care about them and the Labour party does not. This year capping has been worth up to £198 per couple and next year we are prepared to take action once more if authorities continue to behave in this unreasonable way. For that reason I have no hesitation in commending the draft orders to the House.