Michael Gove’s evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee may have laid out some of his thinking on local government finance, but it also raised a major disagreement at the centre of the levelling up and devolution agenda.

Plans to reform business rates have been kicked around Whitehall since a surprise announcement by the then chancellor George Osborne at the Conservative Party conference back in 2015 – but the thorny issue of funding councils has been a constant for far longer. Singh review, Lyons review, poll tax… choose your starting point.