Mr Major’s Written Parliamentary Answer on Local Authority Income – 18 April 1989

Below is the text of Mr Major’s written Parliamentary Answer on Local Authority Income on 18th April 1989.

Mr. Allen To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent his Department has studied the possibility of replacing locally collected local authority income with a hypothecated amount within the income tax system; and if he will list such research or studies which have taken place over the last 10 years.

Mr. Major This approach of “assigned revenues” has been considered and rejected in successive studies of local government finance, most recently in the 1983 White Paper “Rates: Proposals for rate limitation and reform of the rating system” (Cmnd. 9008). It is not the practice of the Government to hypothecate revenues from a particular tax to particular areas of expenditure.