That is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy. Obviously the tax aspects are important in their effect on the marginal fields. We are aware of their importance, and the impact of the tax will be discussed when the full text of the Bill is available together with the other measures in contemplation.

I regret that it has taken me so long to deal with that point. I shall now reply to some of the questions which have been asked in today's debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) was a little concerned about remarks by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection concerning the productivity deduction. Certainly right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition benches pricked up their ears when she came to that part of her speech, and they read into it implications which perhaps it did not deserve. Perhaps my hon. Friend also read into it more than there is there.

My hon. Friend was fearful of penalties being demanded of people who break the TUC guidelines. I refer my hon. Friend to paragraph 13 of the review of the Price Code consultative document. That paragraph shows exactly what is proposed and shows also that this is a matter which would have to be considered with both sides of industry to determine whether there was a practical way of fulfilling the objectives stated there.

There has been some discussion during the debate about how far the Budget is a reversal of what my right hon. Friend did last March. A number of hon. Members, including the Leader of the Opposition, have made something of that point. I am always interested when the Leader of the Opposition talks about reversal of policies. Such talk is a little inappropriate from him. Indeed, such an accusation does not wear well with him.

The House must appreciate the scale of the problem that my right hon. Friend has been dealing with in his Budget. The idea that the placing of corporation tax in March 2 per cent. higher than was intended by the Conservative Government, or that the introduction of the ACT surcharge are causes of the liquidity crisis, is absurd.

My right hon. Friend has found it right to rectify the situation, both through the Price Code, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, and through the taking into account of stock appreciation in the calculation of corporation tax, to the extent of £1,600 million, a figure far out of scale with the measures that he took last March.

What has made it a Doomsday machine has been the operation of the productivity deduction at 50 per cent. What has made up the Doomsday machine has been the rate of inflation and the slow rate of growth in the domestic market. That has made it impossible for the productivity deduction of 50 per cent. to operate without depriving industry of liquidity. The rate of inflation and the slow rate of growth in the domestic market did not begin on 4th March 1974. They were already operating at the end of 1973.

If hon. Members thought that modification was needed in the Doomsday machine they should have taken account of the situation I have described, of how industry was being deprived of its liquidity. When we came into office we found that the previous Conservative Government had not prepared in any way to provide themselves with information about company liquidity. The information upon which they depended was not derived directly from companies. It was derived from information from banks and financial institutions. They did not know about the problem and that, presumably, is the reason that they did not take action.

We have now decided to improve the quality of statistics on this point. I think that in future Governments will be better prepared with information about company liquidity than we were in March, and certainly better prepared than were the previous Government at the time they departed from office.

It has been generally agreed on all sides—in the Press, and to a great extent in the House—that the main characteristic of the Budget is realism. The realism lies in what it rejects as well as in what it says. We no longer need to reject the Leader of the Opposition's illusion of deficit-led growth, because nobody could think of that as a policy in the circumstances.

The realism in the Budget is based on an appreciation of the fact that during the next four years living standards in this country will, for the most part, not be increased and that energy prices must be brought up to the level of cost because we cannot continue to subsidise them. Further, public expenditure must be kept under control and the balance of payments position must be rectified as soon as possible, because we cannot go on operating at these high levels of deficit indefinitely. Unless the social contract works, there will be an inevitable effect on the level of unemployment which no manner of demand management can prevent. We have four years in which to fight for the future of this nation, and in this Budget lies a proper beginning.