Before I get to the main theme of my speech, I understand—perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—that today is the Chancellor's birthday. I only hope that he has celebrated it as he himself thinks fit, although his ideas of celebration will, perhaps, not coincide with mine. Certainly we on this side of the House will wish the Chancellor many more birthdays but no more Budget days.

We are coming to the end of a long Debate. It has now lasted for five days. Hon. Members on all sides of the Committee will agree that one of the chief features of the Debate has been the many brilliant maiden speeches which we have heard from both sides. I have been particularly struck as I have listened to them, with the familiarity, the ease, and, it seemed to me sometimes, even the understanding with which so many hon. Members handled the technical jargon of modern economics. It is a matter of great admiration and envy to one like myself who did not have the advantage of being educated at either of the two seminarises which now turn out our ruling class—Winchester or the London School of Economics.

It would be invidious when so many have spoken, to refer to particular cases, but I cannot refrain from one reference to the speech by the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton). I was particularly charmed with one of her phrases in which she accused hon. Members on this side of the Committee of thinking from the top downwards. The corollary which she applies to the front bench opposite is, I suppose, that their reasoning processes start in what we might call the "infrastructure" and then attempt to struggle upwards. I am much obliged to the hon. Lady for her explanation because it has now made clear to me many things which in the last five years I have been unable to understand.

Naturally during the course of these five days the ground has been well covered. It is not easy to find new subject matter and I shall, therefore, be daringly original by devoting most of my speech to the actual topics of the Budget. Before I come to that, I want to deal with one question which the Minister of State for Economic Affairs directed to me when asking what was our attitude to the wage and profits standstill. In that part of his speech I thought the right hon. Gentleman was less than gracious to the Opposition, because he knows perfectly well that under difficult circumstances we on this side of the Committee have supported the policy of the Government with regard both to wages and to profits. And he cannot have forgotten the appeal which my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) addressed only at the beginning of this Parliament, on that very subject of a standstill in profits.

We believe that in the present circumstances this wage and profits freeze is an expedient which is indispensable, but we also feel that it is an expedient which is becoming more and more difficult to maintain. We believe that the real answer is to attack the causes which today are making that policy so difficult in execution; to attack that inflationary pressure which, whatever the right hon. Gentleman says, still exists; the inflationary pressure which is forcing up the cost of living and which is continuing. However, whatever loyal support may be given on one side of this House or the other to the wage freeze, will, in fact, end by destroying it.

In turning to the proposals in the Budget, may I start by saying a word with regard to the Resolution which we are now discussing. As the Committee realises, it contains words which impose some limitation on the discussion of the Purchase Tax. Last year all discussion was entirely excluded, and that exclusion was much resented not only by hon. Members upon this side of the Committee. To create a precedent whereby that feature of taxation, which perhaps most excites public interest, is entirely removed year by year from the purview of hon. Members of the Committee, was indeed something at. which to be frightened and resentful.

This year we are grateful to welcome in this Resolution some relaxation from the austerity of last year. On Friday the Chancellor—subject always of course to the Ruling of the Chair when the discussion comes along—threw further light on what he considered would be the result of this Resolution. It would appear that not only would it be possible to discuss the three main classes in which the goods fall and the possible reductions of those three figures of taxation, but that when discussing those classes, it will be possible for hon. Members who have some specific case in mind to put that forward as a reason for the change they advocate. I do not say that this is wholly satisfactory. At any rate it represents a considerable advance and it is one which, for this year, we are prepared to accept.

However, the right hon. Gentleman on Friday did not show himself averse from a suggestion that we might get together to see whether we cannot come to common agreement about the form which our future discussions on this tax shall take. I admit that there is something to be said on both sides. There is a lot to be said for the constitutional right of Members to discuss the particular tax grievances or desires of their constituents. On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) was quite right when he said that this is the sort of tax to which we are not accustomed in the Budget, and that if full use were made of that right, if every one of the thousand items were to be the subject of discussion and Amendment, the Budget discussions could be turned into a dreary farce. Somewhere between the two courses must lie the solution on which all could agree, and certainly I think that the matter should be considered in that spirit.

I want now to turn for a moment to the alteration which is made in the Purchase Tax on luxury motor cars. This in itself, of course, is a very small thing, but it raises a principle which may be of increasing importance in the future. This is a concession which is based, not upon humanity, but upon economics. The Chancellor, in making this change, has not been guided by any zeal for social justice. He has not felt the intolerable burden of the would-be purchaser of the Rolls Royce; he has not felt that he must do something to make his life less burdensome. He has just felt that it is bad business to go on with the tax at this height, and I think that he is quite right.

But are we certain that the considerations which have led the Chancellor to make the change in this instance do not, and will not, apply with equal force to other items which are now covered by the Purchase Tax? I do not know whether hon. Members noticed a few days ago a letter in "The Times" about a project concerning a new organisation for selling high-class textiles in the United States of America, which had had to be dropped because, owing to the Purchase Tax, the home market was too limited. It seems to me that we shall have increasingly to consider in the future what might turn into a dilemma.

On the other hand, with rising competition, especially the new competition for which we have to look from Germany and Japan, the future of our exports will lie more and more in the quality goods. Certainly only in the quality goods can we hope to break into the dollar area. At the same time, the Purchase Tax is definitely designed—one can see the social purposes as far as this country is concerned, and in times of difficulty agree with them—to restrict the consumption of or, indeed, sometimes to exclude the expenditure on, luxury goods. That may well become a dilemma, the quality market abroad having to be tied to the utility market at home. I hope that the Chancellor will be very careful to watch these possibilities arising and be ready to do for other industries who can make a case, what he has done with our approval in the case of these motor taxes.

Now I turn to the question of the Purchase Tax on commercial vehicles. It is, of course, a fundamental departure from the whole history and purpose of the Purchase Tax to impose it upon articles of this character. Hitherto the Purchase Tax has been regarded entirely as a tax on articles of consumption; and it has always been the aim of the Government to exclude from its scope the raw materials or the capital equipment of industry. There are, I know, minor cases where things used in industry fall under the tax solely because it is impossible to distinguish them from exactly similar articles which go into ordinary consumption, but that is the principle upon which the Purchase Tax has been built up.

Here for the first time the Chancellor is putting this Purchase Tax fairly and squarely upon an article which is not one of ordinary personal consumption, but which is in fact the capital equipment of not one, but of a great variety of interests. After all, there can be here no question whatsoever of personal luxury or lack of personal restraint. It is not likely that anyone in a fit of anti-social extravagance will give a lorry to his girl friend or even to his wife. The lorries of which the Chancellor complained are only bought by people because in buying them they believe they will be able to transport their own, or someone else's, goods more cheaply and more efficiently.

But, we are told, people are buying too many lorries. It is quite true that people are buying these commercial vehicles in increasing numbers, but that does not necessarily mean that they are buying too many. This is. no national phenomenon, no curious kink to be observed only in this country and not elsewhere. As has been pointed out, the increase in the purchase here is less than the increase in comparable countries abroad. It is less, proportionately, than the increase in the United States of America and less even than in most of the countries of Europe. Of course it is immensely less than the increase in the under-developed countries such as India, Pakistan and South Africa.

There is nothing wrong prima facie in this increase in buying a new developing form of transport. We are told that we are living in times of increasing industrial activity and, indeed, we are. It is not surprising, therefore, that the cheapest form of industrial transport should be in increasing demand. Some play was made with the suggestion that this increasing demand in the home market was having an effect upon our export trade but no evidence whatever has come from any Member of the Front Bench opposite to support that theory. Can they give any instance where there are unfilled orders from abroad which might have been filled if only these extra vehicles had not been going into the home market? On the contrary, most opinion seems to be that the export market is getting more difficult, and there is, not increasing, but less, opportunity.

There is only one argument; that these wicked people in buying commercial vehicles in this quantity, are exceeding the target set out for them in the Economic Survey. That is dreadful, but, before we really count that to them as a crime for which there is no pardon, we would like to know who is responsible for setting the target and how it is arrived at, because our experience of targets in the Economic Survey over the last three or four years has not always been very happy. It has not always given any great idea of the accuracy with which they are arrived at. Until we are told that, I regard effective demand for an article of this kind as likely be a far better guide to the national requirements.

Any idea I had of the Government's argument for imposing this taxation, any vague idea of their reason, was completely confused when I listened to the remarkable speech—to which I shall refer later —by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power on Friday. In discussing this question, the Parliamentary Secretary, "The Man from the Ministry," the authority, the oracle, said a friend of his in the business, a salesman, had told him that in fact it was very difficult to keep up the sale now in the home market. If that is so, what are we worrying about?

In any case, this is the clumsiest way of effecting the right hon. Gentleman's purpose because this extra tax falls upon all commercial vehicles: it falls on the righteous 50,000, with which the white paper agrees, as well as the 30,000 wicked ones it wants to see done away with. It simply means that it is a tax upon an indispensable article of equipment of British industry and that the cost of that tax has to be borne by British industry as a whole.

In introducing the Petrol Tax, the Chancellor began by giving what I admit to be one very formidable reason. He said that petrol was dearer in France and Belgium. I agree that it must be most mortifying to him, in a democratically planned State, to think that there could be anywhere else in the world something to be bought at a dearer price than here. I am sure that he will never rest until he can eradicate anything of that kind from our national life. But there are some of us whose hearts are still so malignant, and whose understanding is so stubborn, that we cannot be entirely convinced by that argument. We still have a sneaking feeling that it is rather an advantage to have in this country something cheaper than it is in a competitor country. Therefore, we must, I am afraid, look for other more convincing reasons to justify the imposition of this tax.

Let us look at the results which this tax will have. I begin with the private motorist, although the Committee will realise that the private motorist, and particularly the pleasure motorist, as represented by the user of the basic ration, represents only a very small fraction of the petrol which will bear this burden—I think in the neighbourhood of 7 per cent. Of course, on this aspect of the tax we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power, a Minister whom I must now regard as being—in America they call it "Presidential timber"—Chancellor timber. He explained to us that as a result of this tax the pleasure motorist would be better off, that his motoring would be cheaper. The Parliamentary Secretary told us that on Friday.

I spent the week-end trying to work it out, but so far as I am concerned, it does not seem to come out, because, however I do the sum, whether I divide, add, multiply or subtract—I never quite know which I ought to do—there remains always the fact that whereas before I spent so much on petrol, I now have to spend so much more. It must be because I have not got the slide rule with which the Parliamentary Secretary said he had worked it out. However, as he is "the man from the Ministry," I suppose that we must accept what he says.

All that I beg of him and of the Chancellor is: do not let his generosity run away with him, do not let him be tempted, after having made this one present, to think that twice the tax would be twice the gift. Of course, so far as the pleasure of motoring is concerned, this is a start in rationing by price, by making it more expensive and then feeling that more of it can be allowed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) naturally must receive some personal gratification from the step that has now been taken. I have here a whole list of quotations from speeches made at the time when he said that something might be done to increase the basic ration. But I see the Chancellor said the suggestion that more petrol should be made available was one of the most irresponsible acts—and I can quite imagine what he looked like when he said it. I must say that only the Minister of State showed some perspective and balance in this matter. He did say that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that such improvement might be made. But he was out of step. It was quite plainly impossible to allow a man with such dangerous tendencies to stay where he was, and he has therefore made this horizontal move.

Apart from the very small proportion of petrol used by motorists for pleasure, what about the very large proportion, something like 22 per cent., which goes in the supplementary ration? Is anyone going to pretend that the supplementary ration is for pleasure purposes? All of us have had to take up such cases for our constituents, and I will say in favour of the right hon. Gentleman that when he was there, we always got a courteous response from the Ministry. In some cases we got the alleviation for which our constituents asked. But we were always made to understand that it was strictly a matter of business and the facts had strictly to be proved. Even the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power cannot pretend that this tax is a gift to the many who are using their supplementary ration for indispensable purposes; doctors, commercial travellers and the like.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston (Sir P. Bennett), who always speaks so splendidly and with such knowledge on these particular topics, has dealt very fully with the effects which this will have on transport both of passengers and of freight. I do not wish to enlarge on that, except to say that it surely is optimistic nonsense to brush aside the burden of a tax of this magnitude, and to pretend that, somehow or other, it can be absorbed without reflecting itself seriously in increased fares and increased freight charges. One point I want to make is with regard to the commercial users, people who use these oils not for the purpose of transport, but as part of their raw material. Is it seriously intended that this tax shall apply to industries such as paint, polish, printing, in fact industries who would find the cost of their raw materials, which enter largely into the cost of their products, raised by an act of Government policy?

In particular, I would ask the Chancellor of the exchequer whether it is a fact that under the wording of the Resolution, for the first time industrial benzol is brought within the purview of the tax? If so, it is a very serious departure. I do not pretend to understand the technicalities but I do understand that industrial benzol is now being used in the manufacture of phenol; and phenol as such is one of the most important ingredients in a whole host of new industries, such as plastics. In fact, plants costing millions of pounds have been set up by the chemical industry to deal exactly with this new type of production, which surely is the type of production the Chancellor ought to be encouraging. To think that their very raw material, the basis of their product is to be handicapped by the Chancellor's own deliberate will, is something which seems to be almost impossible to contemplate.

We regard both these duties as thoroughly bad. We regard both as being not only irrelevant but repugnant to the main theme of the Chancellor's Budget. Surely, the most important consideration we must have in mind is, first, to do everything we can to reduce the cost of production in order that we may compete in the export market, and, secondly, to do all we can to reduce the cost of living in order to maintain the standard of wages and profits. Here, in these two cases, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is going contrary to both and is imposing upon this industry a burden which will result inevitably in a rise in the cost of production and inevitably in a direct imposition on many millions of people of an addition to the cost of living.

So many comments have been made on the broad outlook both of our budgetary and our economic policy that there is little new to be said. I saw this Budget described in one paper as, "The mixture as before." I wish I thought it was only that. I think it is, "The mixture as for ever." The Chancellor today has put himself in a position where there is no room for manoeuvre, no room for policy making. We talk about the Budget being the instrument of economic policy. So it should be, but it is nonsense to consider that it is that now. It is merely the Chancellor having to follow the lines laid down by the automatic happenings both on the revenue and the expenditure side. He is, in fact, like poor F'ankenstein, the prisoner of the monster he has created.

We have only to look how things have gone over the last two years to judge of the future. Last year the Chancellor introduced a Budget which was not very popular with hon. Members opposite, but that was largely because of outside influences. In his Budget speech he made some timid gestures about economy, and hon. Members behind him were taken in by that. Of course, they know him better now. They know that when the Chancellor is posing as the Treasury watch dog he is horrific but his bite is negligible. In his Budget last year the Chancellor was able to give quite substantial reliefs, both in direct and indirect taxation, without having to impose any corresponding increases in taxation. This year he is unable to give a substantial relief which he thinks right, beneficial and helpful, without having to impose a corresponding amount of tax increase in another direction.

Next year, to judge by the warnings which he himself gave us in his Budget speech, it will be a question of having to impose increased taxation without any thought of corresponding reliefs elsewhere, because embedded in the Chancellor's marathon of last Tuesday was a most significant warning of what we have to expect. He told us frankly of the automatically rising expenditure which, year by year, the Chancellor has got to contemplate. He warned us specifically that an end had come to that equally automatic rise in the revenue which so often has saved his predecessor and, up to now, has saved him.

He gave us the prospect of a revenue which is more likely to fall than to increase. Indeed, such matters as terminal charges and receipts are almost certain in the future not to turn in his favour but against him. Therefore, the terminal receipts are likely to fall off at a greater rate than the falling-off in terminal charges. That is what the Chancellor is asking us to contemplate—an endless vista of Budgets with rising expenditure, with no new services or gifts and nothing new to help the people. It will be just rising expenditure from what has already been incurred, and falling revenue to set against it.

Hon. Gentlemen opposite are very fond of twitting us with the question, "What are you going to cut?" The question with which we are going to twit them more and more in future is, "What are you going to tax?" I know the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who used to take a very important part in a broadcast programme called, "Can I Help You?"—which used to come on at times when Dick Barton was on holiday—was quite frank and told us what he was going to tax. He listed the reliefs in Income Tax allowances and the Purchase Tax made over the last five years, and said, "There you have got a taxable reserve, and all you need to do is to put all these taxes back again." That is to be the Budget of the future, and we are told by the Chancellor that all that has to be faced and borne because it is necessary if we are to maintain full employment. Hon. Members behind him have heard that said and have repeated it so often themselves that I think they have actually come to believe it.

I do not believe it for a minute. I do not believe that the high rate of Government expenditure has been responsible for the high standard of employment for the last five years. In fact, I think the only thing which, during those five years, has threatened to attack the high rate of employment has been the high rate of expenditure. I think it was chiefly that high rate which led to the first dollar crisis, which was only solved by Marshall Aid. It was chiefly the high rate of expenditure which led to the most recent dollar crisis, which was only ended by devaluation. It is going to be the chief cause of any further dollar crisis—a crisis which, when it comes, will have no further expedients to meet it, and can only be met by a cut in imports, with all the dire effects which that must have upon employment. It is the inflationary pressure coming from this excessive Government expenditure which is turning us into, and which, if it goes on, will keep us as, an isolated, high-cost community in an ever more competitive world.

It is pathetic that the people of this country should be asked to make these great sacrifices and to carry the great burdens that they are carrying now in the belief that they are doing it to maintain something which they value above all else. In fact, that policy is more likely to destroy the things to which they attach so much value. That is the future goal, the inevitable and unavoidable goal of Socialist policy as it now proceeds. Sometimes, in my more depressed moments—