On Monday, Chancellor Gordon Brown in his pre-budget statement announced that he was going to consult on what he calls a “planning gain levy”. On top of existing arrangements for taking 50% of land subject to planning permissions for much needed affordable housing, he is now wanting another 20% of the land value increase as a windfall tax.

I hope councillors from all over Oxfordshire, and especially Oxford City where reusing land efficiently is most important, will stand firm against this when they are consulted. Labour governments over the past 80 years have tried this tax three times already, most recently as the Development Land Tax of the seventies’ Labour regime. It has been abandoned each time because as a transaction charge it puts landowners off seeking planning permission for the sort of change of use we rely on to provide housing development land.

Nothing has changed since the ill-fated attempt thirty years ago. Far from providing pots of money for councils to spend, it will make it very much more difficult to entice owners to bring forward land suitable for housing, which we desperately need. It will encourage sprawl and inefficiency. Unused land will lie idle and be a focus for anti-social activity.

The big housebuilders have enough land and enough planning permissions to keep them busy without new supplies for a good while, until this tax is repealed yet again. The only people this will really hurt are those without adequate housing at present.

There is a far better solution, however. We should base property taxes on only the land value of a site and not the buildings and improvements on it. And to make it payable even when a site is vacant or underused. This way owners paying taxes on underused land will be encouraged to bring it up to the most efficient use.

The previous County Council voted twice to support Land Value Tax and carried out a pilot study in the Vale of White Horse. Oxfordshire is therefore in the perfect position not only to oppose this ill-considered development tax but to prove the effectiveness of Land Value Tax as an alternative. Missing this opportunity may simply switch off housing development in Oxfordshire for years.