Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the present Crisis in the Rating System and in local government finance is a direct result of the criminal lunacy of reorganising local government without at the same time reorganising its finances, and that this represented a triumph for Whitehall civil servants, aided and abetted by the Conservative Government, who have long wished to destroy local democracy?

They recognise that the Crisis in the Rating System has been caused by successive Government cuts in rate support grant and the gross unfairness of a poll tax that is likely to be set at £361 per head in East Lothian.