Orders of the Day — Finance Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 December 1974.

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Photo of Mr David Howell Mr David Howell , Guildford 12:00, 17 December 1974

I do not see how the hon. Gentleman can draw that implication from what I have said. I am sure that all hon. Members will fulfil their parliamentary duties on all Select Committees in the proper way. I am merely expressing the widely-held view that the Government's preliminary ideas on the wealth tax—let us pray that they get no further than that—on top of the finalised ideas in this Bill would destroy the private sector and go flatly against their solicitous words about trying to create a vital and profitable private sector. They are not creating it; they are destroying it, and the more clearly and honestly that is said, the better for all of us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton) said that he could not discern a Budget strategy. Of course there is a strategy at the centre of the Budget, and it is the drearily familiar one which has been announced by successive Chancellors. It is that somehow, in ways yet to be specified and announced, there will be more exports and investment and less consumption. If that means anything, it means that the hole which is being torn in the economy by the vast increase in oil prices and the world recession should not be filled automatically by higher consumption, by allowing wages to mop up consumption or allowing public expenditure to rise. That is what it means if it means anything at all. Personally I fear that the Chancellor's phrase is an incantation and means nothing I see not the slightest chance of his aims being achieved.

Peering ahead, we on this side see two things. First, we see disaster if the present trends continue, and my right hon. and hon. Friends will no doubt return to this aspect tomorrow in the debate. As the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe), said comment is divided between those who see disaster in the immediate future and those who see it a little further down the line after a few months of illusory attempts to shore up the situation and postpone the inevitable. That is one thing we see.

Again looking ahead, we also believe that recovery is possible. If consumption can be held down, if there is a serious attempt to rein back public spending on the lines mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Dodsworth), if there is an attempt to change the psychological attitude to public spending and to recognise that public services are for the time being not to improve, and if above all wages can be checked, recovery is possible. We still believe that across the Floor of this House, if we ever get the attention of the Chancellor or the Treasury Ministers, we could agree on some sane moderate policies to ride the storm and minimise the coming hardship instead of plunging us into higher unemployment which, whatever the Chancellor may say, is almost inevitable.

That is what we look for, but where is the moderation? Where is the serious attempt to divert resources into exports and out of consumption? There may be the beginnings of realism on the energy crisis. I expressed a hope on that during my Budget speech. Others said that I was being sanguine and that nothing would come of it. I still like to think that the Chancellor meant what he said and that there is to be a substantial increase in energy prices to bring home to the people of this country the realities of the situation we face. Certainly, the announcement this afternoon that petrol is to cost 72p per gallon could be taken as evidence of a start in that direction, although a Written Answer was hardly the most courageous way to announce it. I would rather have expected the Secretary of State to come and tell his Friends on the Left wing exactly how petrol prices are to move, just as I expect the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary in due course to come and speak openly and tell the rest of us how prices are to move in the nationalised fuel industries. Could it please be noted that we do not want any more Written Answers tucked away in HANSARD in future when important statements which cut into living standards are made?

If any progress is being made, it is offset by what we have been discussing this afternoon because here we have a Bill reeking with hostility to investment and private enterprise designed to destroy small business—most of us are agreed on that—to smash up small traders and to break up farms—as my right hon. Friend has said, the concession, even for working farmers is a very feeble one—to weaken commercial undertakings, to penalise partnerships and to destroy woodlands, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) reminded us.

The outcome of this particular bit of grand strategy which is supposed to create a new climate of confidence is a dreary list. Its message is perfectly clear: that the big battalions will be all right for a while and the independent sector of the country will bear the brunt We divide tonight on our amendment more than anything else because we wish to drag the Government back from the edge, to jerk them out of their fiscal fantasies, to wake them up from their sleep-walking trance.

So far in this calendar year 1974 we have had from the Chancellor three Budget Statements and two Finance Bills. HANSARD is littered with assertions that the right hon. Gentleman wants to restore the private sector, increase productivity, raise investment and check inflation, with adjectives like "vitality" and "vigorous" tripping off his tongue. We believe that nothing has been done to give any substance to his words. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree that one has a growing, agonising suspicion that they are mere words and that when it comes to action nothing materialises.

On the other hand, everything has been done by the Bill to undermine precisely those whom the Chancellor claims so insistently and continuously he is trying to help. We say that we are against this kind of political ambiguity and schizophrenia—there are less polite words for it. That is why we shall vote for our amendment.