Cameron pins election hopes on council tax

Voters go to the ballot box next Thursday in 27 county councils and seven unitary authorities in England, as well as two mayoral elections. In all, almost 2,400 council seats are up for grabs, most of them last contested in 2009 when the Tories made large gains against a deeply unpopular Labour Party led by Gordon Brown. Reports have suggested that the Tories are braced for the loss of as many as 500 seats, though Labour’s campaign co-ordinator, Tom Watson, has said he expects his party to pick up no more than 200-250.

Asked how many seats he was expecting to lose, Mr Cameron said: “As for the results, you can summon any number of pollsters and experts and the rest of it to give you a forecast. I’m a participant. I’m there to try to persuade people how to vote rather than to make a guess as to what will happen.”

He added: “Elections in mid-term of a government are always difficult, but I will be out there with my teams working hard to persuade people to vote Conservative with a very clear message, which is if you want to keep the council tax down – and after all this is what these elections are about because your county council sets the council tax – then you vote Conservative and get good value for money.”

Mr Cameron said councils had done “a very effective job in demonstrating you can deliver more for less” by making cuts to back-office functions rather than frontline services.

But he indicated that he expects town halls to do more to cut spending.

“I think there is still more we can do on that front, because what matters is the services which the customer gets – the rubbish removal, the street lighting, the effectiveness of the education system. Those are the things that matter, and actually (with) the back-office costs, there’s still a lot more efficiencies that can be found,” he said.

Mr Cameron said handing responsibility for running council tax benefit to local authorities was “a sensible move”.

“When it was a national benefit, some councils didn’t have much of an interest in keeping council tax down because council tax benefit was covering so much of the cost, so it makes sense to localise it, it will make the system more efficient,” he said.