Mr Alan Clark: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Tierney) described the Budget as a family Budget. That is a nice, cosy title, with election-winning overtones attached to it, and in some ways I would not dissent from that title. However, this thirteenth Budget presented by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer has an ominous significance attached to it since it offers evidence of a major...
Mr Alan Clark: That is perfectly true. This is one of the arguments that come into the matter. I am not concerned with looking at the reasons why the manufactured goods which drive our own products off the market are doing so. Quality may be a factor in respect of goods which originate in West Germany and parts of the EEC. Very low cost may come into it in the case of those which originate in parts of Asia....
Mr Alan Clark: Will the Prime Minister agree, and was this not confirmed to him by my constituent Mrs. Fergusson of the Service Wives Committee, whom he met in Plymouth last Friday, that what causes most distress and resentment among Service families is the way in which their take-home pay is constantly eroded by deductions for housing, for subsistence and in some cases even for transporting their children...
Mr Alan Clark: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer at what percentage rate he expects consumption to be rising in the second and third quarters of the current year.
Mr Alan Clark: But is it not the case that in the Budget Report, in projecting the figures for consumption and also the critically related figures for imports, the Treasury has abandoned the use of its own model and has preferred to rely on the middle range of views of a number of economic forecasters—to use its own language? Doubtless this includes astrologers as well as Greek scholars, but why has the...
Mr Alan Clark: Sack the Minister.
Mr Alan Clark: Gerald Kaplan.
Mr Alan Clark: How much?
Mr Alan Clark: I remember many years ago, be fore I entered this House as a Member, being greatly impressed by a pamphlet that the right hon. Gentleman wrote, which I think was called "Income Tax at 3s. 6p. in the Pound." I may have got the figure wrong. Was that purely an intellectual exercise, or has the right hon. Gentleman changed his views about the relative merits of direct and indirect taxation?
Mr Alan Clark: Make them come here to listen to devolution debates.
Mr Alan Clark: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers have suffered from injuries from assault in the course of their duties in each of the years 1974 to 1977, inclusive, in the metropolitan area.
Mr Alan Clark: Are not these figures the most disturbing of all the criminal statistics? Can the Minister say that she shares the concern of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself at what seems to be the increasingly casual attitude of the courts towards this particularly serious offence? Would she not agree that it is the attitude of some courts towards this offence, rather than the physical risks...
Mr Alan Clark: No one would want the Minister to mediate between the city of Plymouth and South Hams District Council on this occasion, but to use language such as my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Hicks) has used about protecting the inhabitants of these rural areas from the encroachment of the cities is going too far. Does not the Minister agree that if the people of Plymouth are to be decently...
Mr Alan Clark: Does the hon. Member agree that this country has not yet fallen so low that it has to degrade itself by arguing questions of fiscal and economic policy on the basis of the question whether the revenue from the record industry is likely to increase or decrease?
Mr Alan Clark: One thing that has changed is that we have suffered inflation rates unprecedented this century.
Mr Alan Clark: When the Ministers consider the progress of the industrial strategy, do the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend ever reflect on the ease with which manufactured goods of foreign origin enter this country and the difficulties that are placed in the way of those who manufacture such goods in this country and wish to export them?
Mr Alan Clark: Will the Minister agree that "pointing out" and "drawing attention to" are no substitute for the hard defence orders which would restore employment in this factory?
Mr Alan Clark: Is not there considerable evidence that the private recrimination, mutual jealousies and general incompetence of the French and the Belgians in this case show that snap reactions by the Community are singularly ineffective? Leisurely consultations are all very well, but does not the Minister agree that in a crisis British subjects are likely to be save only by British Service men?
Mr Alan Clark: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) has expressed himself with his customary lucidity and persuasion. None the less, my right hon. and hon. Friends retain the view that this area of national security is so sensitive that the extension into it of the concept of democratic accountability, which is the current trendy phrase, would be undesirable. Indeed, the American experience...
Mr Alan Clark: That is the reverse of my view.
