Orders of the Day — Finance Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 November 1955.

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Photo of Mr Charles Hale Mr Charles Hale , Oldham West 12:00, 16 November 1955

Well, there we are.

Three hundred years ago, Oliver Cromwell might have had his disfiguring warts removed, but it would have been at a heavy cost to the National Health Service. That Service would still have had to pay 90 per cent. tax on the implement for removing the warts. Then we come to: Perfumes (including solidified perfumes); anti-midge lavender; pomades and scents of all kinds; scented sachets; perfumed smelling salts; perfumed spraying fluids (except approved disinfectants—in respect of which no toilet claims of any kind are made This is really nonsense. I do not believe that there is an hon. Member on either side of the Committee who thinks that anyone in the Treasury has gone through this list carefully and tried to find out what these things mean. In some working conditions, disinfectant is an absolute necessity in order to make it possible for the workers to work. It is fantastic to visualise slaughterhouses without disinfectant.

This is the interesting thing. Under this Schedule, if a manufacturer is honest enough to say that this disinfectant serves no useful purpose, it attracts the lower tax. If he puts on the bottle a label with a statutory declaration to say that the preparation disinfects but does nothing else, he would still be absolved from this increase, but if he says, "This is good disinfectant; it does you good," then, as I understand, it attracts 90 per cent. tax, because it then becomes something that has made a claim other than a claim for disinfectant.