Mr Douglas Houghton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many employers, as at any recent date, were known to the Income Tax authorities to be holding money deducted by them from the wages and salaries of their employees under Pay-As-You-Earn more than six months previously; and what is the estimated amount involved.
Mr Douglas Houghton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how far the Post-War Credits of the ex-Service men concerned will be reduced or extinguished by the remission of arrears of tax under the recently-made concession.
Mr Douglas Houghton: Will my right hon. and learned Friend say whether he took the post-war set-off into account in giving the Committee an estimate of the cost of this remission?
Mr Douglas Houghton: I have been very interested in what has been said by the hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson) about the disappointing results of personal savings. It may be that being a little closer perhaps to working-class folk, I know why there has been this disappointing result in the National Savings Campaign in recent months. I do not think it is because working folk have not the money. If that...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I will show that much of the money taken in taxation, and taken away from the working man, is, in fact, given back to the working man with something added to it. I will give examples of taxation which is redistribution of purchasing power, and the first I will mention is interest on internal debt. That takes £485 million a year. Surely that is one of the chief features of our taxation...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I beg your pardon, Sir. I can only plead that, being new to the House, I did, as part of my apprenticeship read through the whole of the speeches made on the Third Reading of the Finance Bill of last year.
Mr Douglas Houghton: I thought that questions of taxation, at all events, were very close indeed to the Finance Bill, but if I transgressed the Rules of Order, I apologise, and I hope that you Mr. Deputy-Speaker, will guide me if I stray again in the concluding remarks which I wish to make. This seems to me to be so vitally important in connection with general statements which were certainly made, if I may say...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I was trying to examine some of the consequences of reducing taxation. I question very much whether reductions in taxation in certain directions would have the desirable consequences which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to suggest. For instance, are we sure that if we abolished some of our taxes the consequences would not be harmful? Reduced taxation is inflationary in that tax...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I am approving of this year in the light of the facts. I should have approved of last year's Finance Act had I been here to do so, but, in retrospect, I suggest that the tax reductions made last year have increased the cost of living because they have not been matched by corresponding increases in goods and services. To that extent the incentive which my right hon. and learned Friend hoped to...
Mr Douglas Houghton: For all I know, it might be a higher percentage on personal income in some cases and a very much lower percentage in many others. I wish to mention the question of incentives. We heard in an earlier discussion on this Bill, I think from the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans), about workers who will not work overtime because of the higher rate of tax. I submit that it is evident that...
Mr Douglas Houghton: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he proposes to take to encourage all men and women entitled to the vote to make sure that their names appear on the electoral lists to be published at the end of this month.
Mr Douglas Houghton: Like many others who have been fortunate enough to be called in this Debate, I find there are many points which have been raised that I should like to take up. I should like to dissect Smith's Law which has been invoked in a very remarkable speech and I should like to go back to last Thursday's Debate, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer exhorted industry to bring their plants and methods up...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I doubt whether Members opposite will applaud just as much when I have finished my speech. He then went on to say: Responsible Tory papers are advocating cuts in expenditure scarcely less painful than in 1931. We know what that means—cuts in unemployment benefit, intensification of the Means Test."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th July, 1949; Vol. 467, c. 801–2] What I wish to ask the right hon....
Mr Douglas Houghton: I am very interested to get that reply from the hon. Member for East Coventry (Mr. Cross-man). If the President of the Board of Trade holds that belief about Conservatives in and out of this House, then what part is he to play in this great drive for increased output? In his capacity as President of the Board of Trade, he will doubtless continue to address meetings throughout the country of...
Mr Douglas Houghton: asked the Minister of National Insurance what decisions were reached by regional medical officers in the 202,188 cases referred to them for second medical opinion in the 12 months ended 30th September, 1949, and the 75,189 referred to them in the previous 12 months.
Mr Douglas Houghton: —To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has now any further statement to make concerning the Masterman Report on civil rights for civil servants.
Mr Douglas Houghton: Does the statement of my right hon. Friend mean that these discussions, in which the Staff Side of the National Whitley Council have already been invited to take part, are now to be deferred for a further 12 months, and if that is the intention behind the statement will my right hon. Friend reconsider it and authorise the discussions to proceed immediately?
Mr Douglas Houghton: One conclusion which we have drawn from the speech just made by the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Amory) is that we live in the age not only of the economic man but of the political man. We live in a time when capitalism has to come to terms with the great mass of the people who are searching for the foundations of the society in which they live and the moral and social justification for the...
Mr Douglas Houghton: Surely the object of this Bill is not to reduce existing profits; the main purpose of this Bill is to curb increasing profits. That is why the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to describe it as "rough justice," and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said in his speech that it is unfortunately impossible to find any basis for a discriminatory tax and, therefore, it has been necessary to...
Mr Douglas Houghton: I cannot give an example where workers have been asked to work longer, but in fact over the whole range of industry workers are being asked to work harder, which means greater production. At all events, hon. Members will agree that the accepted basis of industrial production at the moment is upon greater effort and greater efficiency by workers and by managements alike, but workers...