Report (14TH April).

Part of Orders of the Day — Ways and Means. – in the House of Commons at on 6 May 1930.

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Photo of Mr Winston Churchill Mr Winston Churchill , Epping

But the Resolution is dealing with the whole subject. I think it will be inconvenient to discuss it in parts. I place myself entirely under the protection of the Chair, but very often it is customary to allow a more or less general discussion on the first Amendment which raises a point in connection with the Resolution, and, basing myself upon that custom, as the matter has been raised, I say: Who is he getting the £500,000 from and upon what process of our national and economic life is this new tax to impinge? It is no use for the right hon. Gentleman to try and pretend that he can get away in a manner of this kind by trying to make the discussion piecemeal, by trying to burke discussion, by having one fragment discussed on one Amendment and another fragment on another. Luckily, our procedure prevents that method from being entirely successful and I hope the House and the country will appreciate what is really intended. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has imposed this duty with a view to obtaining £500,000 a year from the persons who have hitherto enjoyed the privileges granted to them in connection with insurance. If he is, surely, he is taking a very injurious course, and I do not wonder that my right hon. Friend the Member for Northern Cornwall (Sir D. Maclean) was moved to make a qualified protest upon this subject. As my right hon. Friend the Member for St. George's (Sir L. Worthington-Evans) pointed out, these very insurance policies all come into the purview of the death duties. They are an aggregative tax on the estate which falls in at death.

The process of insurance is surely one which from every point of view, except that of "the road to ruin," should be encouraged by the Government. People make sacrifices to insure their lives in case, owing to the chances, and ups and downs of their walk of life and their employment, they should be cut off at a moment when their families would be left in circumstances of great embarrassment, involving a complete alteration in their mode of life. They make great sacrifices year after year and thereby immense funds are steadily gathered, which funds constitute one of the few processes of collective saving now at work in this country. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may try to sweep away private savings. They may declare that wealth is not to be allowed above a certain scale or standard. But I imagine that they will allow the process of collective saving to proceed. Here is a process of securing vast sums which the State has thought it right and necessary to protect and now the right hon. Gentleman is coming to break in upon this process. Even on their awn dismal theories is that a proposal with which hon. Members opposite agree? It is, from his own point of view, the most short-sighted policy that he could adopt. I should have thought that the encouragement of insurance policies was one of the most necessary elements in a wise treatment of British finances at the present time. We see the enormous advantage of this method. We are a nation which has carried insurance in the industrial and social spheres to incomparably higher levels than any other country in the world. Then why should the right hon. Gentleman strike this blow? Is it really worth it?

Of course, the taxpayer is the victim. He is to be left on the rack. If the right hon. Gentleman is to be judged by the efficiency with which he can screw the last bit out of the taxpayer then, on that principle, he would, indeed, be blameworthy if he rejected such a very ingenious little extra turn of the screw as is here proposed. But, on another principle, to a Chancellor of the Exchequer who desires to see the whole forces of this country gaining in strength apart from the individual, such a proposal is most short-sighted and most ill-motived. I hope we are going to hear from the President of the Board of Trade who has, I see, been brought into this discussion, and who has considerable departmental responsibility in regard to the progress of insurance in this country, some statement to the effect that the Government will reconsider this matter. It really is not worth while. What you gain in the £500,000 a year will probably inflict discouragement upon the actual practice of insurance and will make a loss in the ultimate yield years hence which will far exceed the gain to the revenue. Why break in upon the principles which has been established in regard to these premiums? What is the point of breaking in upon that principle for such a paltry advantage as that which has been described?

I ask the President of the Board of Trade to say that the matter will be reviewed and reconsidered. We are quite aware of the fact that, ploughing with borrowed oxen, the Government have the power to carry it in any form they like. One of the oxen looks like giving at the moment, but, no doubt, the goad, accurately applied, will stir him into his wonted activity. We know all that, but the fact remains that the right hon. Gentleman is doing this quite needlessly. I admit that he has enormous difficulties to face and that in facing them he must necessarily run counter to a great many elements in the nation but in this case he is quite needlessly broadening the irritation and the burden which his Budget, inflicts, by casting into it—for what is an inconceivably small sum of money compared with the problem which he has to meet—the whole wide area of these policies of insurance.