Time for a council of war on local taxation

'DON'T touch it, Jack - it could go off at any moment!"

"Get down off the table, Cathy, it's okay."

"Let's order one of the Lib Dems to defuse it."

"This is your department, Tom."

"No way, Jack!"

"I know - pick it up with tongs and put it in Annabel's pigeonhole..."

Last week, despite elaborate security precautions, someone managed to plant an explosive device in St Andrew's House. The innocuous-seeming package was labelled Local Government Finance Review and the perpetrator appears to have been one Sir Peter Burt, sometime chief executive of the Bank of Scotland and chairman of ITV.

Fortunately the ever-alert Jack McConnell took the precaution of reading the executive summary, where he was at first gratified to discover Recommendation 2: "We recommend that a local income tax should not be introduced, either as a replacement for council tax or as a supplementary tax." That satisfactorily saw off the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists.

Only when his finger travelled beneath Recommendation 4, his lips soundlessly mouthing the big words, did Jack freeze with horror as he read: "We recommend that a new Local Property Tax (LPT) should replace council tax. LPT would be assessed as a proportion of the capital value of homes in Scotland."

Michty me! Jack may not have the best brain in the world for deconstructing the works of Proust; but he has been around council chambers long enough to recognise a multi-megaton, politician-killing WMD when he sees one. The merest suggestion, six months before a Holyrood election, that Scottish homeowners might be fleeced of 1% of their house values to maintain councillors and their cronies in the state to which they have become accustomed is the stuff of which electoral landslides are made.

As the rumour spread like political nerve gas, even the most complacent List MSPs, hermetically insulated from the democratic process, fearfully recognised that, in terms of public reaction, this was one-member-one-lamppost territory. So Jack - a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize for Survival - took prompt evasive action. Sacrificing courtesy to realpolitik, he disowned the Burt report even before it was published: a Scottish solution to a Scottish problem.

"There is no way that Labour ministers will support a 1% homes tax... if this is the main proposal, it will not be given the time of day," an authorised source told the media. By this stage, Sir Peter Burt was being airbrushed out of history; a day before publication, his report already slept with the fishes. Really, you cannot get decent staff these days. All the chap was required to do was rubbish local income tax (job done) and approve an increase in the number of council tax bands, so that taxpayers could be further plundered, on a divide-and-rule basis, without provoking outright rebellion.

Instead, Burt came up with a typical banker's scheme for putting half the nation out on the street within three years. The committee's remit was to pussyfoot around local government finance without going near the real problem: municipal profligacy. When Gordon Smith, chairman of CBI Scotland, gave oral evidence to the Burt committee last year, he observed, in criticism of its limited remit: "One of our concerns is, when looking at change, are we just trying to find different ways of taking more money?"

Of course they were. All discussion on local government finance is predicated upon the assumption of ever-expanding expenditure and concomitant tax increases. Since 1997 Scottish council tax has risen by more than 50%. Last year alone the increase was 4%; this year it was up to 5%. Yet the Executive has committed itself to a record £30bn "investment" in local authorities over three years: it gave them £8.3bn this year, due to rise to £8.5bn next year. Still, prodigal councillors rattle the begging bowl.

Several councils are technically bankrupt. Last July, Dumfries and Galloway threatened a 16% tax hike. Where does the money go? On politically correct nonsense, is the answer. Clackmannanshire raised council tax by 4.9% this year. It now spends just 97p per meal in care homes, down from £1.05 last year. Yet the council is creating a post of "writer in residence" with a salary of £31,000. Last year it was looking for a "nappy officer" to crusade against disposable nappies.

Are Aberdonians mean? Not if they are councillors. Aberdeenshire council recently spent £35,000 employing two "nursery rhyme promoters"; two months ago it hired a "trampoline officer" to advise children on the use of this amenity. And all this happens against a background of pensioners switching off the remaining bar on their electric fires in midwinter to pay council tax. The latest proposal is to award Scottish councillors basic salaries of £15,452, rising to between £30,905 and £51,608 for council leaders.

The need is not to increase local government revenue, but to cut local authorities down to size. Away with the officers, co-ordinators and facilitators: back to emptying bins and unblocking drains. Why should a council have an "arts policy"? These megalomaniacs are living far beyond our means. The already-binned Burt report cost £270,000. In sober perspective, that represents 15 nursery rhyme promoters.

This escalating burden is growing out of control. Reduction of local government bureaucracy should be a priority issue in Scottish politics. We need to devise a strategy for progressive scaling down. With an extra tier of government at Holyrood, there is even a case for long-term abolition of local authorities. Such radical thinking was excluded from the Burt review; but the taxpaying public need not be trammelled by any such limitations.