Cyn MP ar gyfer Blackburn West
May I be allowed to congratulate my right hon. Friend on the two very important concessions which have been made and to tell him that the export trade of Lancashire will benefit greatly not only by the complete abolition of Purchase Tax on these two classes of goods, but also by the very substantial reductions of duty in India?
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) has been very lighthearted this afternoon and we all enjoyed it. I was not surprised that he was light-hearted, because it would have been difficult for him to have made a serious speech on this occasion. Yesterday, I listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, South...
I will come to that. The Opposition are in a great difficulty. If hon. Members opposite say, as the right hon. Gentleman said yesterday, that the Chancellor was bribing the voters with Income Tax concessions, that entirely spikes their guns when they come to say that only the rich are benefiting by the reduction of the taxes. They are in a hopeless dilemma and, therefore, they have to think...
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that, on the whole, they are not dissatisfied.
The right hon. Gentleman grumbled, for example, that there was a reduction in the number of acres under tillage. I live in Lancashire, and in that north-western county as well as in a great deal of the west of England, there is land which is much better growing grass than being ploughed for crops. Wartime circumstances, shipping, and so on, forced us to plough up that land, but it was an...
The hon. Gentleman does not understand. We have to plough up land even when it is grassland. The criticism is that too much land has gone from under the plough, which is nonsense. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South, said in a dramatic moment: … nothing off tobacco, nothing off beer … nothing off the petrol tax."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th April, 1955, Vol. 540, c. 202.] I thought, what...
I quite agree that it enables the companies to pay higher dividends, but it also enables them to put in new machinery and new plant and many other desirable things.
The figures in the Economic Survey prove that what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said is not true. I think that excessive taxation leads to excessive Government expenditure. Whenever there is a large Budget surplus, the Departments, not unnaturally, are tempted to ask the Treasury for more money. Governments are notorious spenders, and it was excessive expenditure more than anything...
