§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)rose at eleven minutes before four o'clock to submit the annual Financial Statement.
I am, Mr. Emmott, introducing a Budget this year under circumstances which, to say the least, are very unusual, and I think I may say entirely without precedent. The position is that the financial provision made in the usual course by the Government last year to meet a substantial deficit was, for reasons I need not enter into, and that are not at all relevant to the question I have to discuss to-day, not carried in the year for which it was intended, and it was only a month after that financial year had expired that the Budget was carried into law. I have no concern at all with the constitutional aspect of the question, and I am not at the moment interested in its controversial side; but I am bound to take note of it, because it has had a very considerable direct and damaging influence upon the finance of the year, and consequently upon the statement which I have to make. It has complicated and disarranged the whole of the finance, and at every point of the statement which I have to submit to the House I shall have to interpolate some observation or figure having reference to that state of things. Consequently it is necessary that I should preface my observations by specially directing attention to that exceptional state of things. It has affected the finance of the year in three or four ways. A month after the expiration of the last financial year two-thirds of the Income Tax had not been collected, the whole of the Super-tax was uncollected, and several new taxes upon which we depended to make up the deficit of the year not only had not been collected, but the machinery for their collection had not been set up, and it is not even now completed. Large sums have been borrowed 1124 in order to meet the current expenditure of the year, and there will be a Charge for interest even upon the revenue of this year. The greatest complication of all is that certain taxes have been put back. I shall be unable to collect the whole of the Income Tax for this year before the end of the financial year. The same observation applies to the Super-tax. The Land Taxes have been put back. We have lost about a month of the stamps. Therefore, these exceptional circumstances affect very seriously and substantially the whole revenue of the year.