In other words I have correctly interpreted the provisions of this subsection. While talking specifically to this section I would like to have regard to another aspect of this legislation, that is the way the rate itself is to be established for each local authority. I tried unsuccessfully on the Adjournment Debate last night to unravel this Chinese puzzle. It seems clear that when this legislation becomes law there will not be a differential rate for separate local authorities as there was in the past. In so far as we can judge to date, a percentage increase nationwide would be established if the Cabinet finally decided how much money was available, and that would be equalised and proportioned throughout the country.
If you combine that procedure with the provisions in this subsection, I strongly hold the view that the position of growing local authorities, which are desperately in need of funds to provide services de novo which other local authorities by definition already have or had the opportunity to provide, will be seriously damaged. That introduces an area of discrimination that has social implications of enormous proportions. The order will provide all the normal local authority services that we take for granted in built-up urban areas, but which have not yet arrived in new suburban estates, which in many cases have not been taken into charge by the local authorities because the builder has not met all the obligations of the planning permission. The impact and the potential impact of this order is such that it will penalise permanently these areas while the natural tax base, as based on valuation, will be distorted permanently.
I can understand the Minister wishing to do something about this phenomenon because if he were to go to the other extreme and simply to let subsection (5) of this section stand, there would be a wiping out of all the phased reductions. The tax base would jump immediately from, say, 50 per cent to 100 per cent. One does not have the figures and in an attempt last year to get this information from the Department we were told that the figures were not readily available. Consequently, we do not know fully what time bomb we have buried in this section but it is reasonable to assume that it is way beyond the cost of what the incoming financial year could afford. Allowing for that, and I am trying to be objective with regard to the Minister's difficulties, one would have expected him at least to have allowed some way whereby the tax base would not be distorted permanently and that on a contrary tack he would have allowed the phased reduction to continue, in other words, starting from this year with no more nine-year reductions but that those houses in the process of benefiting from such reductions would be allowed to follow the natural process so that a house generating rates multiplied by four years, that is £16 in this year, would generate an income rate multiplied by five years which would be £20.
I should like the Minister to explain why this decision has been taken because it is not possible to do what the explanatory memorandum attempts to do, to palm off today's needs with tomorrow's promises of goodies. Whatever about election promises we are dealing with legislation now. What is being done here is both unfair and unjust. Indeed, there is running through all of this legislation a degree of arbitrariness that is frightening. Disregarding, then, that explanation I should like the Minister to state if possible what would be the additional cost to the Exchequer, the increased sum valuation, in the event of taking up to full valuation those domestic dwellings that are currently in the process of enjoying any of the benefits of remission of rates as identified in section 5. Has that sum been done and, if it has not been done, may we have some indication of the figure, so that we may know the magnitude of the problem with which the Minister has had to deal. Having established that problem perhaps we could consider some ways of coming to terms with it.
