Tories challenge Labour over council tax rebate
The Conservatives challenged Labour over the £200 council tax rebate to pensioners, during Prime Minister’s Question Time today.
With John Prescott and Michael Ancram deputising for their leaders, Mr Ancram questioned why the Chancellor failed to mention in his Budget that the rebate was for one year only.
He told a lively House of Commons that with Labour “the giveaways come before the election and the takeaways come after”.
But Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said the rebate was for one year because the Government was reviewing council tax, and stressed that reading the “small print” of the Tory proposals showed that many pensioners would not get the benefits they were offering.
Council tax was one of several issues on the agenda during the session, which also included violent crime, truancy, asylum and human rights in China.
The likely date of the general election also cropped up with Mr Prescott teasing the House that the election would be on May 5, before adding that he of course meant the county council elections that are already scheduled for that date.
The Conservative deputy leader asked Mr Prescott about rises in violent crime, telling him that it had gone up by 83 per cent under Labour. Mr Prescott conceded that violent crime had risen, but was in part attributable to the new recording system. Overall crime had fallen by 30 per cent and the number of police officers had gone up, he added.
Mr Ancram said that over a million school children a year played truant, and that this was an increase of a third instead of the promised decrease of a third. He added that the Government had failed to remove over a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the Government had improved investment in education and was dealing with truancy, although would prefer to be doing better. On asylum, he said the number of applications had been reduced significantly, which was “quite different” to the time that Michael Howard was Home Secretary.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Menzies Campbell, deputising for Charles Kennedy who was also absent, asked about the lifting of the EU arms embargo on China without “substantive progress” on human rights. Mr Prescott replied that these points were being discussed by European foreign ministers at the moment, but stressed that China coming out into the world was a good step toward a peaceful co-existence.
Mr Prescott’s performance did, however, include one slip-up with him telling the House that asylum applications had “gone up under Labour”. MPs roared with laughter as Mr Prescott realised his mistake.
