§ It is usual, in opening the Budget, to compare the current year with the last, but on this occasion, in presenting a fifth Budget, at the close of a Parliament, I feel entitled to look back over the whole period for which we have been responsible. It has been a chequered story. The difficulties have been more prominent than the good fortune. The immense industrial disaster of 1926 has cut a deep gash across the statistical record of our national life. I thought at one time, and I so informed the House of Commons three years ago, that the finances of the Parliament would have been completely ruined by a loss to the Exchequer, which, including the coal subsidy of 1926, was certainly not less than £80,000,000. However, on a review of the past five years, I must admit that matters have worked out a good deal better than I hoped or expected. [An HON. MEMBER: "Or deserved."] No one has more interest in things going well than the Government of the day and the Minister responsible for the finances of the country. In spite of the injury to every form of national life by the follies of 1926 we have realised a respectable and, as I shall show, a solid surplus in the year that has closed. The material prosperity of this country, whether judged by the condition of its finances, by the volume of its trade or by the saving and consuming power of its people, has maintained a steady advance. For more than two years now we have enjoyed a lucid interval without a 28 general strike or a period of general elections, or a general war. That is the longest lucid interval that I can remember since 1914. Two years' recuperation is quite a long time for this country to allow itself between its ordeals, and, naturally, after two years of peace and quiet there must be a sensible improvement in the general situation.
§ I will give the Committee a few facts and figures. During the present Parliament the savings of the smallest class of investors, measured by the Post Office Savings Bank, the National Savings Certificates, Building and Provident Societies, and other thrift agencies, have increased by £170,000,000. New purchases of Savings Certificates, which were £31,650,000 in 1926 and £36,000,000 in 1927, have risen under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend Major-General Seely to £40,850,000 in 1928. The number of persons employed in the insured trades has gone up by 591,000. The cost of living, according to the latest figures, which I only received at the end of last week, has declined by 18 points at least, while money wages over the whole country are almost exactly at the level of 1924. There has been a notable decline in the consumption of alcoholic liquor, accompanied by a progressive diminution in drunkenness. The consumption of working-class indulgences has shown an increase generally, though it is naturally much more marked in the southern parts of the island. Motor bicycles, silk garments, popular amusements, excursions by train and char-a-banc, have all shown a moderate, steady increase, and this in spite of the shocking injuries we have inflicted upon ourselves in the course of the period I am reviewing. But the symptom upon which I dwell with more confidence than any other as indicating the general position of the masses of the people is the increased consumption of tea and sugar. In the palmy days before the great War, the British people consumed each year per head 6.55 lbs. of tea and 81 lbs. of sugar. Last year, after all that had happened at home and abroad, they consumed per head 9.15 lbs. of tea and 90 lbs. of sugar. That is the record consumption of these commodities. The breakfast table duties are the traditional Gladstonian indices of the condition of the wage-earning masses, particularly of the unorganised masses, and 29 especially of the poor. Under all the froth of our turbulent party fights and in spite of all our common faults and shortcomings, it is at any rate satisfactory to note this steady and marked improvement in such an important feature.
§ Coming now to the commercial sphere. The balance of trade has sensibly improved, and the power of this community to invest capital abroad, thus fostering our export trade, has risen from £86,000,000 in 1924 to £149,000,000 in 1928. New capital issues for home investment in 1928 show a growth of about £100,000,000 over those of 1924. Municipal and industrial issues in the United Kingdom have risen from £70,000,000 in 1924 to £180,000,000 in 1928. Bankers' deposits have risen by £140,000,000, or about 8 per cent. Five hundred million more letters were written and 700,000 more motor vehicles used last year than in 1924. To sum up, whatever may be the fortune of particular industries or particular localities, there is no doubt that we all dwell to-day in a more powerful, more wealthy, more securely founded, and more numerous community than five years ago. There is no doubt that we are steadily improving our own conditions, and that compared with most European countries we are maintaining our old pre-War level. Of course, our progress during these years has been relatively far outstripped by the United States of America, which gained great advantages in the War and has displayed a far higher stability of purpose ever since.
§ I almost hesitate to mention to the Committee the subject of public economy. We are assured on all sides that the only way to gain the approval of the modern electorate is to spend money as fast as possible and on an enormous scale. The two Opposition parties vie with one another in promises of vast expenditure; the only difference between them is that the Labour party would get the money by taxation and the Liberal party would get it by borrowing. A Surtax of 2s. in the £ levied on investment incomes in excess of £500 a year would, if nothing disappointing happened in the collection, produce £65,000,000 a year provided it was levied on the reserves and investment incomes of companies as well as on the investment incomes of individuals. 30 Such a sum would only be obtained at the cost of a very sharp setback to every index of national prosperity. But the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has already distributed the £65,000,000 at least four times over. The Surtax, originally proposed for the reduction of the National Debt, is now to pay for the free breakfast table, for the replacement of all the McKenna, silk, luxury, safeguarding and key industry duties, as well as for the £200,000,000 or £300,000,000 of the Socialist social programme. I must observe that in this field, at any rate, there will be disillusionment—and disillusionment in our own time.
§ The Liberal opposition would proceed to capture the great heart of the people by borrowing. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) proposes to borrow £200,000,000, and to spend it on roads and telephones in order to cure unemployment. Borrowing, if your credit has been carefully looked after, is often feasible, and it is always an easy way of avoiding disagreeable) things like work and and self-denial. It saves a lot of trouble. Instead of having to earn the money and save the money, you just go and borrow. What a lucky thing that in this crisis of our fortunes such a brilliant idea should have struck the right hon. Gentleman! Spending money, borrowed or otherwise, while it lasts is always good fun. There must be many hon. Members who from their personal observation or even experience can confirm that view.
§ Accordingly, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs is going to borrow £200,000,000 and to spend it upon paying the unemployed to make racing tracks for well-to-do motorists to make the ordinary pedestrian skip; and we are assured that the mere prospect of this has entirely revivified the Liberal party. At any rate, it has brought one notable recruit. Lord Rothermere, chief author of the anti-waste campaign, has enlisted under the Happy Warrior of Squandermania. The detailed methods of spending the money have not yet been fully thought out, but we are assured on the highest authority that; if only enough resource and energy are used there will be no difficulty in getting rid of the stuff. This is the policy which used to be stigmatised by the late Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles as the policy 31 of buying a biscuit early in the morning and walking about all day looking for a dog to give it to. At any rate, after this, no one will ever accuse the right hon. Gentleman of cheap electioneering.