Budget Proposals and Economic Survey

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 April 1950.

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Photo of Mr Winston Churchill Mr Winston Churchill , Woodford 12:00, 24 April 1950

I have nearly finished that passage of approbation and commendation which I felt it my duty to make upon the proposals contained in the Budget. I have nothing to say against the Chancellor's proposal to exempt the high-class motor cars from Purchase Tax. I remember five years ago pointing out how a thriving and fertile export trade could only maintain its continuous perennial quality by being based upon a strong domestic industry, and how I was rebuked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then President of the Board of Trade, for such reactionary ideas.

I am glad to see that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's education in finance, for which we have to pay so much, is not wholly devoid of some signs of progress. He is not a star pupil but it would be too soon to say that he is completely unteachable. Of course, however, in this and some other aspects of finance he may have to encounter the criticism that he is, to use an American expression, "taking the poor man's money away from the millionaire to give it to the plain rich."

This brings me to the attitude of the Government towards wealth and large fortunes. Four years ago I travelled back from America with Lord Keynes, who had been on a Government mission and was working at the Treasury. I asked him why the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, when reducing the Income Tax by a shilling, should have made sure that the Surtax on these largest incomes was retained at the confiscatory rate of 19s. 6d. in the £. I shall never forget the look of contempt which came over his expressive features, on which already lay the shadow of approaching death, when he replied in a single word, "Hate." [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."] Hate is not a good guide—[An HON. MEMBER: "We have only your word for it."]—in public or in private life. I am sure that class hatred and class warfare—