This is what I said about council tax in the debate at Cambridgeshire County Council today.

“As Government financial support for local authorities has been cut, councils have had to turn increasingly to council tax to help plug the funding gap and keep those services going. Indeed, Government actually expects them to do so, and includes council tax increases in the ‘increased spending power’ it keeps telling councils it has given us.

We are all acutely aware of the current pressures on household budgets. Far from the promise that after Brexit we would see cheaper fuel for our heating and hot water, £350M a week for the NHS, and cheaper food in the shops, residents across the UK are facing frankly terrifying utility bills, a nine per cent rise in National Insurance, and an onslaught of food price rises.

In Fenland, residents can expect an average increase in their energy bills of £600 this coming year. Remove the £150 discount for homes in Bands A to D, and the Government’s £200 enforced loan, and that’s still a rise of £4.80 a week.

A man on the average Fenland male salary will also pay around £4.80 a week more in National Insurance this coming year, and a woman on the average Fenland female salary will pay over £2 a week more.

And while inflation is quoted officially as 5.4 per cent, this grossly underestimates the real cost of inflation for people with the lowest incomes. Prices of ‘value’ product ranges in supermarkets have soared. Rice, for example, has increased from 45p to £2 per kilo in the last year—a 344 per cent increase—while the number of value products on the shelves has shrunk.

(Huge credit for exposing the real levels of inflation for poorer households to campaigner Jack Monroe, whose ‘Vimes Boots Index’ of the real cost of inflation for low-income families has been picked up by the Office of National Statistics who are now considering how to present inflation figures more realistically.)

When Government punishes lower income families like this, no-one relishes adding a council tax increase to residents’ burdens, but the financial situation we have inherited from the Group opposite is dire. The Joint Administration is proposing an additional £1.19 a week in council tax for those living in Band C homes. The group opposite supports three-fifths of this increase. The point of difference is therefore is the remaining two-fifths—48p a week.

But nearly two thirds of residents in Fenland live in Band B or Band A homes. That 48p a week will be 42p per week at Band B. 36p per week at Band A.

For those with single person discounts, or local council tax relief, the increase will be even less, and we have done our best to compensate lower income households with our household support fund and commitment to free school meal vouchers in school holidays.

While protecting lower income families from the worst of the council tax increase, we will therefore at the same time be more likely to be able to protect the council services on which they rely, as we continue to work to resolve the horrendous financial situation we were bequeathed by the previous administration. That’s fairness in action.

By contrast, the Conservative amendment makes the budget gap in future years even worse, and puts council services at greater risk for residents who need them most.

This Joint Administration committed to a greener, fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire, and we are delivering that.”