But we must not accept that as a way out of the Crisis in Local Government Finance.

The prize must go to the Under-Secretary of State for the Scottish Office who during those two months, in the midst of the most acute Crisis in Local Government Finance that this generation has ever known, sent, for chief executives to read, no fewer than three circulars about what local authorities should be doing to prepare against a nuclear attack.

That is the real Crisis in Local Government Finance.

The solution to the Crisis of Local Government Finance will have to be the restoration of realistic levels of central Government support to local authorities.

condemns the persistence of Her Majestys' Government in forcing on the National Health Service a market driven system of health care against the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the people who work in the health service and of the people who use the National Health Service; records its concern at the growing evidence that the system of patients following contracts results in less choice for patients of where to be treated and restrictions in the treatments available to them; regrets the two year delay in the introduction of the Community Care programme which should have taken effect this month; is alarmed at the serious threat to social service provision as a result of the Crisis in Local Government Finance created by Her Majesty's Government; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government for urgent action to tackle the growing gap between income support levels and charges for residential care.

When will the Minister face up to the Crisis in Local Government Finance in Clackmannanshire and elsewhere, which arises from the Government's squeeze on spending and from their serious underestimate of the costs of local government reorganisation?

The problem with the idea of a local income tax is that it does not address the real causes of the Crisis in Local Government Finance for which the Bill is designed to be a fig leaf: first, the fiddled funding from Whitehall and, secondly, spendthrift Liberal Democrat and Labour councils.

The pain of the Crisis in Local Government Finance has fallen disproportionately on our pensioners, exchanging their dignity and security for anxiety and penury.

It is a symptom of a growing realisation of the Crisis in Local Government Finance.