Speeches by McMahon.

“But my point is that we need to take that in the round. And as Nico said, there are so many different Government Departments that have a view on this, or even hold the ring on some of the regulations around it, and that needs to be worked through the system. We then need to have an eye on what it means for the fee-payi…”

“I would consider that in the round, because what we cannot do is to have a sales, fees and charges policy that is about Milton Keynes car parking rates.”

“I will let Nico comment on how it features in the round.”

“The multi-year settlement, in a way, is only one component part of a bigger project to rebuild the system and shore up the foundations. What a multi-year settlement does is give confidence and the ability to plan ahead. Where councils need to think about their new operating model, it gives time to work through the tran…”

“I would say that, a decade ago, councils were almost directed by the previous Government to be enterprising, to be entrepreneurial, and to go out and make their own luck in the world, but that has consequences. I should say that the relationship between central Government and local government is one of trust and respec…”

“From the infancy of local government in England, councils have always played a bit of a role in supporting local economic development. Many of the commercial assets that councils hold are not held purely as commercial investments. They might have a commercial return on that investment, but they are primarily about supp…”

“Councils have an organisational challenge in how they balance the competing interests, because they will want to deliver good neighbourhood services for their residents coupled with the statutory services that they have to maintain. I will be honest and say that there is a political challenge here as well. As you right…”

“That is not to say that we are not supporting councils. The relationship that we have developed is one of collaboration, and we are constantly reviewing our approach to support and intervention. There are councils that will have best value notices issued, because we do have concerns about governance and finances in som…”

“Wales is a nation; it is not a council. There is a difference between doing it on a national footprint and doing it council by council. On an issue like this, which is so fundamental to the funding of local public services and to individual households, in terms of the bill that is passed on to them, as a Government you…”

“My honest view is that many councils have been forced to increase council tax to the absolute maximum at every opportunity, in a way that, for some households, has proven a significant burden. In part, that has been driven by the previous Government, which actively took away revenue support grant from councils to be ab…”

“I do not accept that it is the elephant in the room. If it is, we’re all at the circus, because everyone keeps talking about the elephant. It is more about the priorities of the Government. The priorities of the Government have got to be stabilising a system that is on the edge of collapse from the inheritance we had. …”

“I am working to a timeframe for rebuilding, within the Parliament, the foundations of a system that was on the edge of collapse. The work that we are doing on structural reforms to local government is a significant project. To change a third of England’s governance structures is not simple at the best of times, but to …”

“Our view is that the funding settlement of more than £69 billion is enough as a bridging settlement, if you like, to take us to the multi-year settlement. The challenge that we all have is to make sure that by the end of the multi-year settlement, given how much churn is in the system—because we have the needs and reso…”

“No. There is no current work programme to embark on a revaluation, any more than there is one for redrawing the council tax system. We get ideas and suggestions all the time: “Wouldn’t this make a good intervention?” I will be honest and say that with any system like this that is established but also very complex, what…”

“I will let Nico talk about what the art of the possible might be. In the end, there will always be things that you could do—you have given some examples of the type of interventions that you could make—but there are no interventions on council tax that do not have consequences for somebody. It is a system that has to g…”

“That is why I made it a priority. For me, a lot of this work is not like retail, politically—most people, when they are speaking over breakfast, do not talk about local government audit—but everyone on this Committee knows how important it is as the foundation of good public services. If you do not know where the money…”

“I think I recall those comments, which I assume were made in opposition, as supported by the evidence: in terms of the unequal nature of council tax, it is a fact that areas with lower tax bases have to charge more per band A and band B property than areas with more affluent properties in higher bands. That is a matter…”

“There is a transition that is pretty explicit in the White Paper, which is about moving to strategic authorities that are basically the arm of growth, coupled with a reasserted local government that is the arm of public service reform and early intervention. If you think of growth and reform as two sides of the same co…”

“I will say for context that the settlement this year was £69 billion, and £5 billion of that was new money. There is new money going into the system, but that is not to say that the demand is not going up as well. It is going up, and in some places it is going up significantly. The response from Government cannot be th…”

“By and large, on business rate retention, which is coupled with the revaluation in the growth sense, the revaluation needs to happen and was always intended to happen. It is just that the previous Government decided that it would not happen. Whatever the tax system, it should be based on the most up-to-date, reliable i…”