Council Tax

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 7 February 2018.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 2:30, 7 February 2018

I'm absolutely happy to discuss further. Just to be clear, the decision found that the system itself is not unfair. There were two issues in the proceedings: one related to the individual decisions of the magistrates' courts on committal to prison, and one was whether the system was capable of being fair. And actually the Welsh Ministers successfully defended their position in relation to the fairness of the system. But, as I indicated in my answer a minute ago, the individual decisions of magistrates' courts have been wrong, either because they've misunderstood the law, or because the law has been misapplied in individual cases, where people have been committed to prison or been expected to pay back council tax over too long a period.

As he will know, of course, the magistrates' courts and their training is not devolved to Wales, and his question acknowledges that. I am aware that the Lord Chief Justice has provided additional guidance and training to magistrates' benches on this particular issue since the litigation began. But on his broader question of the payment of council tax, obviously, there are households struggling to cope in the current financial circumstances, and the research that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance published at the end of last year, which he is currently considering, had at its heart, I guess, the objective of understanding the current practice in relation to recovery, and how that relates to individual circumstances.