HC Deb 18 April 1907 vol 172 c1181

Now I come to the current year. First I will deal with the estimated expenditure. An addition of £500,000 to the new Sinking Fund was peculiar to last year, and is not included in the expenditure which the present Budget has to provide. The figures are familiar to hon. Members. I will not go through them except to note that the estimated balance out of revenue assigned to local taxation is £10,045,000. The figures exhibit total reductions over the estimated expenditure of the previous year of £1,664,000. I hope that reduction will be continuous and progessive. It is, in fact, considerably greater than it appears to be, because we have borne on the Army and Navy Votes for the current year sums amounting to £1,019,000, which under the pre-existing system would have been borrowed and charged to capital account. The real reduction, therefore, on the expenditure is £2,683,000. The main item of increase is in the Civil Services, and it is attributable to a large extent to the automatic growth in the cost of elementary education. As I have mentioned, £10,045,000 is assigned out of revenue to local taxation. The estimated capital expenditure for the year is £3,850,000. The total provision for the year is thus on all these accounts £154,652,000.