Clause 7. — (Abolition of Special Provision for Utility Articles, and Related Amendments.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Finance Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 May 1952.

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Photo of Mrs Barbara Castle Mrs Barbara Castle , Blackburn East 12:00, 8 May 1952

What is that action? The action which the right hon. Gentleman has taken has been, every time we have asked for what the trade is wanting, to find some reason for opposing it. Once again, tonight, the action which the right hon. Gentleman will take will be to go into the Division Lobby and vote for the Clause. I appreciate that he wishes to keep in office a Government that is perilously balanced on a narrow majority, but I still say that if he had fought with us unitedly and determinedly, and with his other colleagues from Lancashire, we could have compelled the Government to give us that which is essential to the survival of the industry.

When hon. Gentlemen opposite vote for this Clause they know that they will be sending a chill wind of despair through Lancashire and other areas where unemployment is mounting and where a depression is spreading whose end nobody can at present foresee. How ironical it is that it should be this Government which, when it was the Opposition, lost no opportunity of attacking Purchase Tax and of blaming the Government of the day for not taking more and more goods out of it, should, when it came into office at a time of textile depression, make one of its first acts the putting of Purchase Tax on to a range of textile articles which, under the Labour Government, were exempt.

That is the whole crux of our argument. That is why we are asking for the abolition of Purchase Tax. We know the financial difficulties of the country, and that it is no good coming along with a frivolous suggestion like that of the right hon. Gentleman to sweep away the tax altogether. We know that to rob the country of too much revenue would mean we should have to get what the right hon. Gentleman wants, slashing economies in Government expenditure and in the social services. We have weighed up the situation very carefully, and we are convinced of two things. We cannot get over the administrative and import and export difficulties of the Utility scheme on the lines suggested by the Douglas Committee without either putting tax for the first time on a range of goods which never carried it before, or recognising that we have to abolish Purchase Tax on these articles altogether.