HC Deb 13 April 1899 vol 69 cc1009-10

So that between the spring of 1902 and 1904 a sum of no less than £7,000,000 a year will fall into the new Sinking Fund. And if Parliament makes no fresh arrangement the new Sinking Fund will be increased by this and other causes until, in 1905–6, it will amount to no less than £9,214,000 a year. Now, it is not in the interest of the steady reduction of the debt—and I think every one will admit this—that the new Sinking Fund should be allowed to increase to such an extent as this. The new Sinking- Fund was never intended to be anything more than a small unappropriated balance of the fixed debt charge.

HONOURABLE MEMBERS

"Oh"

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

No, never; because the great bulk of the fixed debt charge was always intended to be devoted either to the payment of the interest on the debt or to the service of the terminable annuities. If the new Sinking Fund were allowed to be increased to such an amount as I have named I am certain that this would be the infallible result—there would be a temptation that no Parliament could possibly resist to devote a very large portion, if not the whole, of these windfalls of which I have spoken, to some wholesale remission of taxation, just as a similar great windfall was devoted by Mr. Gladstone to the remission of taxation in the year 1860. Sir, I wish to take precautions against that. I wish to follow the precedent which was set by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Childers in 1881 and 1883. It was found in 1881 that in 1885 a great block of terminable annuities would expire. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone proposed that, in order to prevent a large amount falling in at once, with the results which I have suggested to the Committee just now, those terminable annuities should be prolonged, and that suggestion was actually carried out by Mr. Childers in 1883. The terminable annuities were prolonged, and, of course, the annual charge for them was reduced, and with the amount which was gained by reducing the annual charge other Consols were cancelled, and other terminable annuities were set up. I propose to do this now.