PROPOSALS pencilled in a government White Paper due this summer could mean that owners of second homes - the so-called country cottage set - could lose the 50 per cent council tax rebate they now enjoy.

Indeed, if ministers heed the urgings of the Local Government Association, it would give councils the right to charge owners of second homes up to three times the standard rate.

Yet, while there may be a case for using tax levels for ending the system of country-dwellers being priced out of their localities by townees who inflate the prices of rural housing and assist rural depopulation, the rejigging of council tax this way would not be strictly fair.

For how can it be just to charge anyone the full amount for council services if they do not use them to the full?

This will be a test of Labour's "new" credentials.

For, any move to tax middle-class weekenders out of the countryside may smack of old Labour "politics of envy."

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