HC Deb 16 April 1896 vol 39 cc1064-5

I now turn from the Revenue to the Expenditure. The right hon. Gentleman opposite estimated the Expenditure at £95,981,000. Since then there have been very large Supplementary Estimates, amounting in all to £2,517,000, to some extent of an abnormal character. There was a Supplementary Estimate, the Committee will remember, of £1,100,000 to the Navy for increased work in the construction of ships; there were Supplementary Estimates of £496,000 for the Army, in order to bring the payments to the Volunteers on account of the Capitation Grant up to date; and of £92,000 in the Civil Service Estimates, in order also to bring up to date the payments to local authorities in lieu of rates on Government property, neither of which, of course, will have to be repeated; and there was a Supplementary Estimate of £120,000 for the Ashanti Expedition. On the other hand, there were savings of £734,000. The total Exchequer issues of the year were £97,764,000 — an increase of £1,783,000 over the right hon. Gentleman's estimate. Deducting that from the Exchequer receipts, there was a surplus realised of £4,210,000, the largest surplus but two that has been realised in the last 50 years. [Cheers.] That, as the Committee will recollect, has been devoted by the Naval Works Act to capital expenditure in connection with our dockyards and our naval ports. £867,000 of this sum has been required for the year that has just closed; £2,750,000 has been allotted to the current year; and £593,000 remains to be expended beyond that date. This, of course, bears upon the Exchequer balances. The Exchequer balances on 1st April 1895, were £6,300,000, rather more than a normal balance; at the corresponding date this year they had risen to £8,975,000. In the ordinary course this surplus of £4,210,000 would have been retained in the Exchequer for nearly 12 months, and then paid over to the National Debt Commissioners, to be in- vested by them in the reduction of the National Debt. Under the Naval Works Act, as I have shown, it will be appropriated in another way. It will be paid out from time to time for the naval works to which it is to be devoted, and I have no doubt that in that way the Exchequer balances will be reduced by this time next year to something like their normal amount. I have now to state, in concluding this review of the past year, that there will be due to the Local Taxation Fund, £7,367,000—more than has been paid in any one of the last three years, and £353,000 more than was paid in the previous year. I hope the Committee will be of the opinion that this is not an unsatisfactory review of the finances of the past year. [Cheers.]

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