Amendment of Law.

Part of Orders of the Day — Ways and Means. – in the House of Commons at on 27 April 1926.

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Photo of Mr John Simon Mr John Simon , Spen Valley

I quite agree, and I was dealing really with the one and was just going to deal with the other. The right hon. Gentleman expressed surprise at the suggestion that it might be possible to raise and to spend a great capital sum on roads. I do not see the difficulty. If this Road Fund is a Fund in the future, as it has been in the past, which is earmarked for road purposes, I confess that I should have thought that a very considerable capital sum could very properly have been raised on the security of that Fund, and that it would be perfectly possible and very proper that it should be used for the purpose of very rapid and substantial road development. It is a wholly reactionary proposal that we should do something which stops or delays that development; it is bad for trade, it is bad for our efforts to deal with unemployment and to find means of employment; it really delays rather than assists the recovery of the nation to more prosperous conditions; and it is, as a matter of fact, diverting a Fund which, before the War and after the War, has been throughout dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman's own colleagues as though it was a Fund for road purposes and for nothing else. If the Home Secretary were here, I would have had; I quotation to point out how he said so quite recently, and on those grounds I think the road proposal of the Government is open to very serious criticism.

Allow me to add two or three words on the steady tendency of this Budget to extend a change in the fiscal system in the Protectionist direction. The tax on imported wrapping paper seems to me to be a perfectly miserable tax. The size of the industry in this country which is supposed to be protected thereby is less than the size of some of the single enterprises that are going to be injured by the tax if it raises the cost of wrapping paper. Every household, especially every poor household, is exposed to the effect of a tax like that—unless it perform the miracle of not raising the price of wrapping-paper. When we come to consider the tax in detail, I expect great difficulties to arise over what is to be done in the case of imported commodities, the main value of which is in their contents, but which are wrapped up. Are we going to tax all the wrapping-paper in those comparatively trumpery cases? I am sure it will be found impracticable to do so. If, on the other hand, it is said, "I am going to disregard the wrapping-paper unless it is a substantial fraction of the whole value of the duty," what we are doing is not assisting British production but putting a penalty on the British producer who has got to buy all his wrapping paper under these new conditions while imports come in which will not be affected by the Duty. I cannot think that this proposal, which was left out last year, is one which on fair examination can possibly be justified.

I can quite understand the right hon. Gentleman's reason for wanting to round off his Motor Car Duties by bringing in commercial motor cars, and I thought there was great force in what be said, because I know it is a fact that this difficulty about spare parts and all the rest of it creates an immense amount of complication and does very little good. At the same time, the language which he uses when he announces this proposal shows how cheerfully and boldly and absolutely the Chancellor of the Exchequer disregards the assurances which the head of his Government has made. He used language in flattest contradiction of the most solemn assurances of the Prime Minister. In his Budget speech, yesterday, he said commercial motor cars could not possibly be taxed, as no such tax could be justified within the limits of the Safeguarding of Industry policy.