Part of Orders of the Day — Finance Bill – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 17 Gorffennaf 1974.
As the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) has said, this is an important amendment. It concerns a matter that goes to the very heart of the Budget judgment. The fact is that this is not a Conservative but a Socialist Budget. The fact is equally true that in the amendment a lot of money is at stake. I believe that we are not free to take a clause such as Clause 12 as it now is and to deal with it in isolation when the sums are as vast as those involved in the amendment.
The country has just gone through a three-day working week. At that time the costs of goods and services were rising rapidly, possibly more rapidly than ever before. Companies were making record profits and yet at the end of the year they found that their liquid positions were worse than at the beginning of the year. There were record profits but they did not cover the requirements for increased costs in keeping the same level of stocks that were maintained a year before. The conditions that companies have faced, although they have been clouded because of the monetary lull in their cash demand and a consequent easement of their position, have not been helpful and there are serious difficulties in many cases.
Any easement in the cash situation at the time of the original Budget decision was only temporary. I believe that the Budget decision should have been not to impose any further burden on companies but to continue to encourage them to go on producing and investing so that the future of our trading position could have been more secure. Having expressed that view—I believe it is a view which is held unanimously by my right hon. and hon. Friends—we must consider the Bill as it now is and consider the cost of the amendment.
Great though my sympathy is for the views expressed by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mr. Rees), I am bound to say that I do not take quite the same robust view of this matter as he does. From what I have heard so far, I would not be prepared to go into the Lobby to support the amendment.
How much better it would have been had the statement and the two-day debate on financial affairs which I understand we are to have next week had occurred before the Report stage of the Bill. We could then have discussed the amendments in the full knowledge of the Chancellor's views.
For those reasons I am reluctant to support the amendment in the Division Lobby, although I approve of the principles behind it.