Letters: Forget mansion tax – fix council tax

These letters appear in the September 30 edition of The Independent

Independent Voices
Monday 29 September 2014 18:59 BST
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The decision of the Labour Party to introduce a mansion tax (“Tory donors are likely to pay millions under Labour’s mansion tax”, 29 September) ignores the need to correct the injustices of the council tax.

This tax was always understood to be hitting the poorest tenants hardest. Now calculations undertaken for us by the New Policy Institute (NPI) show that it is worse than we thought. During the period surveyed, council tax (Band D) rose by 154 per cent and the average house price in the UK rose by 305 per cent.

Home owners were enriched by a chaotic housing market, but at least they paid their own council tax. Tenants gained nothing; as landlords’ wealth trebled, they made the tenants pay their council tax as well as ever-increasing rents. The injustice worsened in April 2013 when benefit recipients could be required to pay up to 30 per cent of council tax by local authorities. Over the past 10 years of council tax the single adult jobseeker’s allowance increased by 31 per cent, the RPI by 38 per cent, the cost of food by 46 per cent and of domestic fuel by 154 per cent.

Those of us who would like to see the council tax, business rates and stamp duty abolished and replaced with a land value tax, of about 1.0 per cent, note with interest that the average Band D council tax as a proportion of average house prices fell from 0.92 per cent in 1993 to 0.58 per cent in 2013.

Homeowners, landlords and property speculators; you have had your cushy innings of rising house prices and lower taxation. It is now time to love your neighbours by giving way to the benefit-claiming tenants of the UK, in work and unemployment, who are continually impoverished – both relatively and absolutely – by governmental ineptitude over the past 30 years, and by accepting a progressive land-value tax in the interests of economic and social justice.

Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
London N17

I thought this Government was going to be hard on tax avoidance and restrict tax-avoidance schemes, but yesterday George Osborne has introduced a new loophole that will enable the rich to avoid further tax. Set up a pension scheme to meet your needs as a pensioner, bung some more money into another pension scheme, of course with tax relief on the contributions. Then leave it until you die when your grandchildren will receive these tax-free contributions grossed up. Nice one George!

AB Crews
Beckenham, Kent

The palaver over a mansion tax is an all-too-convenient distraction for our mainstream parties (report, 26 September). Meanwhile council tax is crying out for reform. It is far too regressive. The answer, of course, is more bands (better still a set percentage of the value of the property) and a long overdue revaluation. It’s been 23 years since properties were valued.

More bands and a revaluation merely redistributes the council tax burden with, in all likelihood, there being more winners than losers. What’s not to like?

Time for courage from our political class.

Yugo Kovach
Winterborne Houghton, Dorset

The NHS is miles ahead of its rivals

T Sayer (Letters, 25 September) considers the NHS to be “not fit for purpose”. In June of this year The Independent reported the results of a comparison between the healthcare systems of New Zealand, Australia, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Britain and the US.

The comparison, carried out by a US-based foundation, ranked Britain first overall, despite having the second-lowest healthcare costs of all 11 countries included. Britain was first in 9 of 11 characteristics considered, and failed to make the top three only in “healthy lives” which can scarcely be laid at the door of the NHS.

Before we consider discarding the world’s best system, we should be damn sure we have a better alternative.

Ken Campbell
Kettering

After a career of building up community mental-health services in Kent in the 1980s and 90s I recently experienced the impact of NHS cuts on the mental-health services offered to a close family friend. After an initial, serious mental-health crisis and eventual recovery through the services of a crisis intervention team, there was a lack of skilled ongoing support to the patient and his family. This resulted in a repeat crisis 12 months later and admission to an in-patient bed for three months.

This is not just bad mental-health practice; it is economic nonsense. Any “savings” made by mental-health cuts must be set against real costs they give rise to – in this case the cost of a repeat crisis, three months’ inpatient service, lack of employment, and intense family stress.

It is easy to cut services but not easy to build up a workforce of appropriately skilled and committed staff in the mental-health field.

Barbara Tower
Warlingham, Surrey

Congratulations to The Independent for featuring on your front page Harry Leslie Smith, with his eloquent warning on the UK’s possible return to the dark days before the NHS (24 September).

Sally Parrott
Cranleigh, Surrey

Royal society is a club for older white men

The president of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, has launched an investigation after the scientific body awarded just two University Research Fellowships to women and 41 to men (report, 25 September). Better than an investigation would be a solution. If the Royal Society were to award grants to each gender in the same proportion as applications from each gender, then there could never be any bias: unless of course you believe one gender to be less able than the other.

Further, since it has been suggested that women in science on average have less self-confidence than their male peers, removing the term “outstanding” from the Royal Society’s grant descriptions (“For outstanding scientists in the UK”) might serve to increase the proportion of female applicants.

These simple acts might prevent the Royal Society from being described as “a club of mostly older white men that every year picks more similar members to join their club” by the eminent American professor Jonathan Eisen.

Dr Louise Allcock
Galway, Ireland

An "Englander" – and proud of it

It is never long before any expression of the wish to leave the EU and to bring immigration largely to a stop invokes the charge of “Little Englander” (Editorial, 29 September). It is a patronising charge intended to discomfort and embarrass the recipient. I am neither a little nor a big Englander, merely an Englander who wishes to be allowed to continue to live his life immersed in his own culture, with all its foibles and its faults as well as its joys, and not immersed in a melting pot of other people’s cultures, no matter how beneficial that is perceived to be for his own culture.

Edward Thomas
Eastbourne

Tesco’s aggression against rural towns

Chris Blackhurst (27 September) notes that Tesco “for years... maintained an aggressive, cold, superior stance where the media, City, politicians and suppliers are concerned” but omits communities. What about Tesco’s constant and unforgiving, unfeeling, planning applications, over many years, for new stores in the rural market towns of this country, often against significant local opposition?

Chris Lynch
Halesworth, Suffolk

Ordinary customers of Tesco and others like myself inexperienced in the ways of big business must have rubbed their eyes after reading, in your Business section report (27 September), about “payments Tesco demands from its suppliers” with further references to “revenues from suppliers” and “supplier income”. Money flowing in this direction will come as news to many.

Alan Bunting
Harpenden, Hertfordshire

What’s Yasmin’s plan for the middle east?

I don’t honestly know whether the bombing of Iraq and Syria will defeat Isis, but something clearly must be done. What I do know is I am fed up with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (29 September) et al saying it won’t work and is wrong without stating what they would do. Perhaps The Independent could take the lead and insist that half of any article critical of the bombings be given over to the author’s alternative plan?

Steve Brewer
Leeds

The Ryder cup calls out for reform

Following the US’s third Ryder Cup defeat in succession and their eighth loss in the past 10 tournaments, isn’t it about time that they were replaced by a Rest of the World team capable of standing up to the prowess of the mighty Europeans (just as Team Europe replaced Great Britain and Ireland in 1979 when the latter were unable to challenge the Americans)?

Patrick Walsh
Eastbourne

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