A CUMBRIAN Peer has criticised Conservative MPs for their 'wall of silence' on his report into council tax disparities.

Lord Dale Campbell-Savours of Workington is calling on these MPs to raise the debate to government, after a report he released exclusively to the Times and Star it emerged that people living in a £52million property in Westminster pay less than people in the average house in Allerdale.

Council tax in band H is £1,665 in Westminster but £3,984 in Carlisle with Copeland, Allerdale, Eden, South Lakeland and Barrow-in-Furness are all even higher.

In the House of Lords on Thursday suggested that MPs in the county did not wish to upset their colleagues in the South by raising the issue.

He said: "The system is divisive if it is provoking resentment in areas unable to raise additional revenues to offset their costs. Unlike London, Cumbria lacks additional sources of revenue, such as city centre parking revenues and penalty charges, high commercial rate revenues, cross-borough services provisions and high-density apartment developments with lower public service costs. The wall of silence on council tax from Cumbria’s MPs, nearly all of whom are Conservative, is a problem. They know that to open up this discussion will upset their colleagues in the south, who feel that any reform will lead to increased council tax in the Conservative heartlands of southern England. We have in place a wall of silence, with ministerial denial and Cumbria’s MPs propping up the wall by a total refusal to engage in debate. All we hear is attacks from local MPs on council profligacy, and it is totally unfair."

Workington MP Mark Jenkinson disagreed with the life peers claims.

He said: "I think far from a wall of silence I have engaged with the issue extensively through your newspaper and people through my constituency through people who wrote to me and I think attempting to distill what is a very complex argument... trying to distil that into some local tabloid headline for attempted political gain doesn't serve anybody well because it doesn't come up with any solution."

Lord Greenhalgh, The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities said: "I have been given a real-time update, and I can say that there are no plans at the moment to reform the council tax system, which, we know, is politically difficult."