It may not be in your recollection, Mr. Speaker, but it is within the historic recollection of the House that the great Lord Hartington, who was the thorn in the flesh of Mr. Gladstone, once rose at a public meeting and said, I dreamed I was addressing their Lordships and, my God, I was. That is an occasion which I do not propose to repeat today. I am very much alerted by the problems facing us.

It may be remembered that in July when the Chancellor produced his second Budget, 27 Members of the Tory Party and two Liberals voted against that Budget on the grounds that it was inflationary. Tonight I am prepared to give the Chancellor, in his third Budget, the benefit of the doubt. I hope that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will ponder deeply whether they should vote against the Budget as a whole. I say this for two main reasons, if I can give two rather strangled and muted cheers for what the Chancellor is now endeavouring to do.

In spite of the "8¼ per cent." remarks during the election, in spite of the extreme pressure put on him by his own Left wing, the Chancellor has at least put forward a Budget which at this moment is not palpably inflationary. Secondly, he is moving, if very hesitantly, back towards a market economy. For these things there is due to him a certain amount of respect, if not praise. Of course, there are doubts, and this is the mystery of the Budget. Bits of it keep being unveiled, such as the statement we had from the Secretary of State for Social Services this afternoon.

We do not yet know what the real pricings will be for the nationalised industries. We have to give the Chancellor the benefit of the doubt. We do not know to what levels industry will be allowed to put up its prices. The right hon. Lady was by no means clear on this subject today. We do not know what will happen about public expenditure. The Budget, now that I have fully awakened to it and read it on several occasions, puts Members in rather the same situation as they were placed in the eighteenth century at the time of the South Sea Bubble debate—"Great enterprises which will later be revealed." Looking at some of the things the Chancellor said yesterday, perhaps we might call this the North Sea Bubble Budget.

Until we know the facts—and we shall not know them for some time—I ask some of my right hon and hon. Friends to suspend their judgment and not to vote against the Budget per se. Of course, there may be bits of it, like the £10 million being handed back to the unions and other resolutions, which should be voted against. But I believe that it would be wrong for the Conservative Party to vote tomorrow evening against what is a genuine attempt by the Government to overcome some of their electoral follies and some of the wilder views of their Left wing.

The most obvious danger lies with this question of the actual expenditure for next year which the Government refuse to announce. They talk about a 2·7 per cent. rate of increase in Government expenditure, put against a proposed or hoped-for 2 per cent. increase in gross domestic product. It is becoming clear that it is difficult to cut back on any Government spending. One thing Governments are always wrong about is the increase in GDP. If hon. Members saw the tape this afternoon they will have seen that the EEC forecast is now for nil growth.

If that is true, and if the Government come forward with a 2.75 per cent. in- crease in real terms in Government spending next year, what will lie before this country, to reverse a saying of Professor Galbraith, will be public affluence in a mass of private squalor. Those of us who have been behind the Iron Curtain know what that means—half finished buildings and people living at a miserable level of employment, or bogus employment near to unemployment.

Therefore, I say that we should give the Government the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, far beyond what has been said in the Budget, there are four areas which should worry the House and the country. First, I doubt whether the Budget is fierce enough to bring home to ordinary people the depth of the economic crisis. Secondly, I doubt whether it is fierce enough to reassure people abroad who are lending us money.

Perhaps there are two even more fundamental points. I doubt whether the Chancellor, the Treasury and the hon. Member for Greenwich have fully accepted the fact that taxation in all its senses at the present level of GDP, in spite of fiscal drag, has reached a point of no return. This is the most alarming fact facing us. I foresee that even at present rates companies will be unable to pay their tax next year. Individuals will find it difficult to pay their tax and those individuals who are self-employed will find it difficult to pay contributions to the insurance scheme for them, which is a form of taxation. Local authorities will find it extremely difficult to pay their Bills and the ratepayers will find it almost impossible to pay the new imposts that will be put upon them.

And this is when right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Labour benches talk about more taxation and taxing the rich. Even the proposals put forward for the new gift tax will in the first critical years raise less money than the old form of death duty. I see that, in the red, or pink, paper it is hoped to get as much money next year out of capital gains as was obtained last year! The situation which the House should most seriously consider is that the means of raising revenue have become almost exhausted.

I turn to the most important question of all. I doubt whether the Chancellor yesterday, or any other finance Minister, has been bold enough in dealing with the oil and petro—dollar crisis which is at the root of nearly all of our troubles today. It is all very well quoting Dr. Witteveen of the IMF or quoting one of the French Finance Ministers. But this situation is becoming worse and is now a Shadow over the whole face of the Western, and indeed, the poverty-stricken areas of the world. Even domestically the proposals put forward by the right hon. Gentleman and his Government are questionable, especially in the state of the economy. To suggest that 51 per cent of oil in the North Sea should be run by a British Government who have not got two farthings to rub together is absurd. If one owns 51 per cent. of the oil, one has the obligation of finding 51 per cent. of the money necessary to get it out. That seems to me to be an absurd proposal and one which I hope will be changed.

Next, although the Chancellor talked yesterday about saving and about waste, he failed altogether—so has his colleague at the Department of Energy—to put forward a massive programme of nuclear investment, which this country must have.

But quite apart from what we in our own parish may be feeling, far more important is the international problem which faces the Western manufacturing Powers and the oil producers. I believe that we must now, on both sides, start facing reality. Unless we do, it will not be just economic disaster that the world will face. It could face an era of commotion, acts of war, seizures and revolution. Five million people unemployed in the United States, between 5 million and 10 million unemployed in Europe and 800 million people in the world starving because of lack of fertilisers derived from oil will not stand idly by for ever.

Even the world's bankers and the central banks are now finding some slight problem in accepting the privilege of taking in billions in oil money at 11 per cent. or 12 per cent. for which they can find no possible use except in backing up their own tottering currencies.

These things must be now faced, and faced at the highest level. What is needed is not just a conference but, I hope, an amicable confrontation to see how the interests of not only ourselves but also the oil rulers, sheikhs, kings and others and the democratically elected rulers of the Western democracies can find a way of getting out of a predicament which can end only in disaster or war.

The time is long past for the special dealings and the sort of privileged positions certain Europeans are trying to seek, such as the French. I believe that the time has come for the rallying of this country behind the much bolder policy being advocated by the American Government. The time has come for a major Western plan regarding oil consumption, oil substitution, and the banking and question of how the petro-dollar is to be dealt with.

This is not a matter for finance Ministers or even Ministers of Power. There should be a major conference between the Prime Minister, leaders and heads of State of those nations concerned. Otherwise, the world could be now heading for irretrievable and irremediable disaster. There are forebodings plenty enough. One can read them in the latest EEC forecasts. One sees the threat of growing unemployment throughout the Western world. One sees how unstable is the Middle East today. It is not just in the bourses and the stock exchanges but in the factories, the farms and the paddy fields that the angel of death is abroad. Together, but only together, can the whole world stay his wings.