§ I will next examine the Estimates of revenue for the year, and will take first the Customs and Excise. I have already indicated that, owing to special reasons, there will be an increase of about £1,350,000 in Customs and Excise. But perhaps, before I give the totals, the Committee would like to know what my forecast is for some of the most prominent and important ingredients of that revenue. I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) pressed for details last year, and I thought I would anticipate any possible interruption of that nature this year. I come first to spirits. There was an excessive amount of duty-paid stocks in hand at the beginning of 1912–13. These have been reduced. I have also to take into account the strike of last year. From these two causes the revenue from spirits last year lost about £400,000. This year I shall budget for £400,000 more than I received last year. I propose to add to that £270,000 for normal growth, so that the spirits will produce £670,000 more than last year. Beer suffered a good deal last year from the strike and the wet and cold season. I budget this year for an increase of £252,000. Tea suffered from the holding back and perhaps from the other cause as well; certainly from the strike, and this year I anticipate an increase of £298,000. Sugar last year suffered to some extent from the poor beet-crops of the preceding year, and prices were high at the beginning of the year. There was an infinitely better harvest last year, and prices are now very much lower. Then there is the strike and the holding back last year and the normal growth to be taken into account, and therefore I budget for an increase of £321,000. Tobacco, owing to the strike and the holding back, should produce £550,000 more this year, and that I confidently anticipate can be added to the £350,000 which I propose to add this year for normal growth.
275§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI will give the figures later on. I am dealing now rather with the increases. Perhaps the Committee would like to know what percentage I put on for normal increases. In the case of spirits we are adding 1½ per cent., and if hon. Members will cast their minds back to the figures I gave, showing the difference between a good year and a bad year, I think they will find that we are not unreasonable in anticipating in a good year 1½ per cent. increase. On beer, too, we anticipate an increase of 1½ per cent.; on tea 1 per cent., and on sugar 2 per cent. Liquor licences this year will be down by £108,000. That is partly due to the fact that houses have been closed, but mainly to the fact that there were substantial arrears from the previous year falling in the revenue of last year. Then we anticipate a substantial drop in medicine labels. This is due to the fact that the retail of patent medicines has largely and quite suddenly fallen. The explanation is quite simple: it is partly owing to the Insurance Act and partly to the revelations in a Committee sitting upstairs, which disclosed the ingredients of some of the more popular medicines. The total from Customs I anticipate will be £35,200,000, an increase of £1,715,000 upon last year. From Excise I anticipate £38,850,000, an increase of £850,000. £1,500,000 of this increase is derivable from abnormal causes, and £1,000,000 from normal growth. Here, perhaps, I may answer the question put to me by the hon. Member opposite as to the total revenue I anticipate from tobacco. It is £18,180,000.
§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI have given that figure already.