Income Tax: Alteration of Additional Rates for 1974–75

Part of Orders of the Day — Finance Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 January 1975.

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Photo of Mr Peter Rees Mr Peter Rees , Dover and Deal 12:00, 15 January 1975

First, I must apologise to the Committee for not having heard the whole debate. I gather, however that no case—not even an ineffective case from a sitting position by the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr) who is now leaving the Chamber—has been put either for the clause or against the amendment.

With the clause the Labour Party is pursuing its paranoiac obsession with what it would choose to call capital and investment income, and what I would call savings and savings income. So be it, but let the country recognise the quality of government we have at this crisis in our nation's affairs.

Most classes of our community have been hit by inflation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that we must all accept a diminution in our living standards. Whether the more powerful sections of organised labour have accepted that remains to be seen. But at least those of our community who are still in gainful occupations have the possibility of cushioning themselves to a degree against this shock and have the possibility of climbing back to their present position after we have passed through the crisis.

However, there is one class which will be affected by the clause and which may be cushioned, to a degree, by the amendment. I refer to those who have retired with a small sum saved with which they have calculated they can spend a dignified and comfortable old age. Many of them were, perhaps, in occupations in which there was no pension provision, or inadequate provision. The company pension is a comparatively recent phenomenon, unfortunately. The self-employed were unable to obtain any tax relief for sums put aside for pensions before 1956. They will be hit particularly by the mean-spirited measure embodied in the clause.

It seems to me, as it must seem to many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, that the self-employed in particular have been singled out as sacrificial lambs to appease organised labour and the extreme Left wing. They are people whom I and my right hon. and hon. Friends meet in our constituencies—