Clause 3 - Duty on beverages made with spirits
Finance Bill
12:45 pm
Mr Michael Jack (Fylde, Conservative)
My hon. Friend leaps ahead with the logic that I was beginning to expound. My thought process triggered his excellent piece of analysis.
I am intrigued to know whether there is a new philosophy based on taxable potential. If the Treasury and Customs and Excise are to spend their time busily looking at retail prices, I might equally ask that the information that we seek in amendment No. 1 should also reflect the fact that what goes up can come down. If, as the explanatory notes state, the taxation principle is related to retail prices, we are surely moving into an interesting era as far as spirit taxation is concerned. There may be interesting variations about which the Financial Secretary would like to tell us.
That triggers a second line of inquiry: if retail prices are being observed, for how long will the Treasury go before it revisits that territory?
It being One o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned till this day at half-past Four o'clock.