The Secretary of State should perhaps be awarded a charter mark for making a speech that lasted less than an hour.

The vote at the end of the debate will set the level of the Government's grant to each local council. The total was set by the vote on the Budget; we voted against. Today's vote will decide how that grant is shared out between the councils.

Conservative Members will be voting for a settlement that will force through average council tax increases of 6 per cent., equal to £40 extra for every household, together with cuts in services to local people. Most Tory Members will vote for their own constituents to pay more and get less, and will express their satisfaction with that arrangement. They will then try to blame their local councils for both the tax increase and the cuts in services, but they will not succeed because everybody knows that the council tax increases are part of the Government's plans.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced his Budget in November, he did his best to direct attention at the 1p cut in the standard rate of income tax. He tried to distract attention from his plan to force council tax up by an average of 6 per cent. this coming year and his plan over the next three years to force council tax payers to cough up an extra £4 billion, equal to a 2p increase in the standard rate of income tax. He was up to his usual trick of publicly giving with one hand while furtively taking away with the other, but he was found out straight away. In his response as Leader of the Opposition immediately after the Chancellor had presented his Budget, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) pointed out what the Chancellor was up to.

The facts are clear, not from Labour party propaganda, but from the documents that the Government are forced to publish on Budget day. Figures produced on Budget day by the Department of the Environment show that the Government are planning a 6 per cent. increase this year on the council tax, equal to £40 per household, and a £4 billion increase over three years, equal to £200 per household. Figures in the Red Book, published by the Government on the same day, confirmed that they were planning for a council tax rise of 7 per cent. on average; that higher figure includes Scotland and Wales as well as England. All that is part of the Government's long-term plan to make council tax payers contribute more towards the cost of their council services and it is no use them denying it.

Government officials have publicly stated that Ministers take the view that the Council Tax can take more of the strain", adding for good measure: The downside is that your taxes go up quite sharply". No Tory Member should have any illusions about why the council tax is going up. It is going up because the Treasury intends it to go up.