Phillip Dunne, the Tory MP for Ludlow in Shropshire, is demanding that the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) come clean about plans to revalue houses in England for council tax.
Mr Dunne has "discovered" that the VOA has been training up valuers and has been covertly inspecting and cataloguing properties in England for valuation purposes. Presumably he doesn't have a subscription to the Torygraph because they made a big thing of it back in 2007 and it was old news then.
The VOA is part of HM Revenue & Customs which is itself a part of the Treasury, the government department run by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and yep, you've guess it, the VOA has no involvement in valuations in Alistair Darling's constituency. The VOA only operates in England and Wales and although a revaluation of Welsh homes has already taken place, the Welsh government uses public money to subsidise council tax bills, effectively capping them.
So, will Mr Dunne be drawing any of this to the attention of his constituents? Will he point out the unfairness of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, elected in Scotland, running the VOA even though the people affected by the decisions taken by the VOA can't hold him to account for his department's actions through the ballot box? Will he be drawing attention to the fact that the Welsh government is using English money to subsidise Welsh council tax bills while the British government sits back and watches English council tax demands increase by 3 or 4 times the rate of inflation? Will he point out to his constituents that an English Parliament would have the same ability to cushion English council tax payers from the increasing demands of public expenditure in the same was the Welsh government does now for Welsh council tax payers?
Perhaps he's changed his mind in the four years since he told CEP Shropshire chairman, Edward Higginbottom, that he prefered the unworkable English Votes on English Laws proposal his party has put forward than the English Parliament that the majority of English people want but I doubt it. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas after all.
