Local Audit and Accountability Bill — Clause 41 — Exclusion of City Deal Levies When Determining if Council Tax Rise Excessive — 17 Dec 2013 at 16:45

The majority of MPs voted to include council tax increases due to levies agreed as part of a city deal when considering if a council tax increase is excessive and needs to be put to a referendum.

The amendment rejected in this vote was:

  • Amendment 18, page 31, line 2, at end insert—
  • ‘(17) The Secretary of State may, by Order, exempt from the calculation of an authority’s basic amount of council tax any levies agreed as part of a City Deal signed prior to this Act receiving Royal Assent.’.

Had it not been rejected the above subclause would have been added to the Bill at the end of Clause 41[2].

Under section 52ZB of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 (introduced via Schedule 5 of the Localism Act 2011 each local council which issues council tax bills, and each body which sets an amount to be collected though council tax, must determine whether its relevant basic amount of council tax for a financial year is excessive. If an authority’s relevant basic amount of council tax is excessive a referendum must be held in relation to the proposal to charge the amount proposed.

The principles for determining if an increase is deemed excessive are published in a report each year, and approved, or not, by Parliament. The principle can be just the setting of a cap, for 2013-14 council tax rises without referenda a cap of 2% was set[3].

Some "City Deal" documents[4], eg. that for Leeds[5], include proposals to be funded by additional levies on council tax, there it is West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority's "transport levy".

Had it not been rejected this amendment would have made it possible for the Secretary of State to exempt such levies from counting towards council tax increases when calculating if the increase is excessive and requires a referendum to approve it.

Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Con237 (+2 tell) 0078.4%
DUP0 1012.5%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent1 10100.0%
Lab0 217 (+2 tell)084.9%
LDem46 0082.1%
SDLP0 2066.7%
Total:284 222080.6%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
no rebellions

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