HC Deb 16 April 1896 vol 39 c1078

If you deduct from this the expenditure of £100,047,000, you will find a surplus of £1,708,000. We have now to consider how that surplus can be dealt with. In the first place I should like to refer to one of the sources to which that surplus is mainly due. I have to consider from many points of view the working of the Finance Act of 1894. [Cheers.] I do not think that I should be justified in making any proposal to the Committee for the repeal of that Act, or for the alteration of any of the main principles on which it was based. [Opposition cheers.] That Act was a great alteration in the financial system of this country, and it is well that there should be as far as possible a general continuity in our financial system. At any rate, when so vast a change as this has been made, proper time should be afforded to test it by its working; but I have received from various quarters, from the officials of the Inland Revenue and others, information as to various points in the working of the Finance Act which inflict hardships on the subject and disclose defects. ["Hear, hear!"] I believe that many of them were unforeseen and not intended by those responsible for that Act. Some of those defects and some of those hardships have already been corrected, of course, under legal advice, by the ordinary course of administration. There are others, however, which cannot be dealt with, because the law must be subject to the interpretation of the Courts before it would be safe to touch them. I may say that I think we must approach any Amendment of such a complicated system as this with the greatest caution, lest in attempting to remedy one hardship we may only succeed in inflicting another. But the points on which I propose to ask the Committee to make some alteration in the law, for the benefit of the taxpayer, relate to hardships, which, as I understand, were really unforeseen.