Labour rules out council tax reform and hits out at 'desperate' Tory campaign

Under the existing system in England there are eight bands which are based on the value of a property back in 1991

Labour has vowed not to shake-up the decades old council tax system if the party wins the General Election next month.

Senior frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth gave the promise as he accused the Tories of making up "desperate" claims on Labour's tax plans. Last week the Tories produced a list of 17 potential tax increases Labour could make - including a council tax re-evaluation.

Under the existing system in England there are eight bands which are based on the value of a property back in 1991 - when house prices were considerably lower. But on Monday Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth, who accused the Tories of "absolute nonsense" over tax, said explicitly: "No, we are not changing council tax bands".

Asked whether it was a promise, he told Times Radio: "Yeah."

He mocked the Tory tax claims, adding: "Why don't I say Grant Shapps [the Defence Secretary] is going to tax your windows, Rishi Sunak is going to tax windows, and you'll rightly say that's nonsense. This is how desperate and nonsensical the Tory campaign has become."

During an interview with the Financial Times, the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves also indicated she was not looking at reviewing the system. She said: “It doesn’t really matter whether I think it’s sensible or not; is that where I’m going to put my political energy? No.”

But over the weekend senior Labour frontbencher Wes Streeting refused to rule out the first re-evaluation of the council tax bands in over 30 years. The Shadow Health Secretary told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: "We don't want to see the tax burden on working people increase."

Asked whether he would rule out a re-evaluation of the council tax system, he said: "Every promise in our manifesto is a promise we can keep and the country can afford." He added: "None of those pledges in our manifesto requires increases in council tax or increases in fuel duty or any of the other number of taxes the Tories are claiming we want to increase."

Last year the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP) urged the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to kick-start the process of re-evaluating the "broken" council system system. It called on him to introduce three new council tax "super bands" for properties worth over £2million. It said the money could be "shared across the country" and help "less prosperous areas pay for key services such as children's social care" facing massive cost pressures.