MONMOUTH'S member of parliament has called for a re-think over the future of council tax.

David Davies said he was not in favour of scrapping the system, but believed the time had come to consider replacing it with an alternative and fairer way of funding local government.

The Tory MP spoke out during a debate on the Council Tax Bill in the House of Commons last week, which seeks parliamentary permission to postpone the revaluation exercise due in England in 2007 until after the next general election.

"It is not that I think the principle of council tax is unfair," said Mr Davies. "It is the level at which it has been set. But I agree that, several years on, council tax has been manipulated to such an extent in England and Wales that I am not sure if we can continue with it."

Mr Davies also called for the formula under which funding is distributed to be examined, describing it as 'deeply flawed.' He said he had seen at first hand how 'unequal things' were becoming in his constituency of Monmouth because of higher costs.

"It costs more to do anything in rural areas," he said.

"It costs more to collect the bins and to send a lorry up and down the lanes of a rural area is more expensive than sending it past a few terraced houses.

"It costs more to maintain roads in rural areas, yet the formula in use at the moment reduces the emphasis given to rurality, which has a deeply detrimental effect on those areas."