§ The Silk Duty finds at its side a small companion which has reached me from the Ministry of Agriculture in the shape of a duty on hops. It is very small, but very shocking; it is nakedly protective. The object of the duty is to protect the culture of hops, and there is a special element of depravity attaching to this duty. A certain school of thinkers contend that beer is food, and, if so, hops are certainly, I am advised, an ingredient of beer—[An HON. MEMBER "Not now ! "]—but I am encouraged in the matter by the fact that those who hold that beer is a food are also, on the whole, very favourable to a protective duty on hops, and, on the other hand, those who dislike the duty on hops still more dislike the suggestion that beer is food, so I think my right hon. Friend's little monster may manage to make its way through the general network of electoral pledges which safeguards the main policy in fiscal matters as far as this Parliament is concerned. After all, hops have always been in a special position. I remember, many years ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs sending 68 for me to receive with him a deputation of hop growers in a Committee Room upstairs. We could give them nothing but sympathy, but we gave them a double dose of that.
§ For the last five years hops have been rigidly, rigorously controlled under an Act passed during the time of the late Coalition of blessed memory. That Act expires in August of the present year, and I have been confronted with the alternatives either of renewing the control or of agreeing to a protective duty. I have chosen the latter, and I am confessing to the Committee the reason why. Control would be utterly sterile, as far as I am concerned, but the duty will produce £130,000 in the first year and £250,000 in a subsequent year, as much, that is to say, or almost as much, as the additional grant which I have been able to give to the Universities of the country for higher education. I cannot afford to disdain any revenue, and even the most modest contributions are thankfully received. The spacious days are gone. We have entered a period of exact accounting and restricted scope; we have entered a period when any contribution, however small, when any diminution of expenditure, however petty, must be welcomed and eagerly grasped and sought for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The duty will be £4 a cwt., and limited to four years. We do not want to encourage any over-production in hops. It will carry with it a small additional duty on imported beer to countervail the tax on the home brewer, but after consultation in various quarters, I do not anticipate any alteration in the important area of the beer duty, and my estimate of the revenue from beer is not affected in any appreciable degree.