§ I am not going at this late hour to enter into any discussion of the principles which ought to guide a Finance Minister in the imposition of indirect taxation. But one thing I am sure will be accepted by every Member of this House, and that is that we ought at any rate to avoid taxes on the necessaries of life. I referred some time ago, in the course of a discussion in this House, to the old age pension officers' reports. There was one thing in those reports which struck me very forcibly, and that was that they all reported that the poorer the people they had to deal with, the more was their food confined to bread and tea, and of the price of that tea, which of course was of the poorest quality, half goes to the tax gatherer. That is always the worst of indirect taxation on the people. The poorer they are the more heavily the tax falls upon them. Tea and sugar are necessaries of life, and I think that the rich man who would wish to spare his own pocket at the expense of the bare pockets of the poor is a very shabby rich man indeed, and therefore I am sure that I carry with me the assent of even the classes upon whom I am putting very heavy burdens, that when we come to indirect taxes, at any rate those two essentials of life ought to be exempt.