§ Mr. McARTHUR (Liverpool, Kirkdale)To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the fact that, while British distillers, tobacco manufacturers, brewers, and other producers are compensated for the disturbance to their respective trades arising from the application of Excise regulations, British sugar refiners receive no such consideration, the Excise duty on refined sugar manufactured in the United Kingdom feeing the same as the Customs duty on the same class of sugar imported from foreign countries; and whether he will consider the desirability of granting a similar discrimination to that first mentioned in the case of white sugar refined in British refineries.
(Answered by Mr. Asquith.) The cases are not parallel. There is no Excise duty on sugar, and the obligation to refine in bond was not imposed for Revenue purposes, but under The Sugar Convention Act, 1903, to carry out the requirements of the Convention, which applies to all the Convention countries, and one object of which was to protect the British refiners against still severer forms of the competition of which they now complain. In the other cases the compensation is allowed for restrictions which are imposed for the protection of the Revenue.