§ At this point, I shall indulge myself once more in brief retrospect. Let the Committee remember the formidable subtractions from the revenue I have had to face. The remissions of revenue made by the light hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley cost £13,500,000 more in a full year than in the year in which they were made. The special receipts from war stores have dropped by £11,500,000 since his day. The revenue from beer and spirits has fallen during my tenure by £10,500,000 a year. I have remitted £41,000,000 of Income Tax, and £4,000,000 upon sugar. Thus the total adverse tide which I had to face has been over £80,000,000 a year; and beyond this the coal stoppage cost the Exchequer, £80,000,000, spread over four years. In order to avoid the reimposition of severe taxation, I have brought into the revenue of these difficult years £19,000,000 from the Road Fund, £10,000,000 from the brewers' credit, £17,000,000 from the earlier collection of Schedule A, £14,000,000 from the Currency Note Account and unclaimed dividends, £60,000,000 in all. But these non-recurrent receipts are substantially less than the losses of the coal stoppage. [Interruption.] I do not want to use a controversial term. We have always agreed to call it the coal stoppage.
§ There still remained a permanent gap in revenue of over £80,000,000. All this had to be filled. On the other hand, we had the debt settlements and we have the working of the Dawes plan, for which 47 matter the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition deserves all due and lasting credit. These have together secured to us increased receipts of over £23,000,000 a year, that is actual receipts of £32,000,000 or £33,000,000. There has been an increase in the Post Office surplus of £4,500,000. The General Exchequer share of the Motor Vehicle Duties is £4,500,000. The general growth of the yield of taxation has been £38,000,000. Lastly, in the place of the £45,000,000 of remitted taxation, we have increased the old taxes upon wines, tobacco and matches by some £6,000,000; and have devised new taxes upon luxuries like silk and artificial silk, the McKenna duties, duties on tyres, and in addition there are various safeguarding duties. Together these yield over £13,000,000 a year. Thus the new receipts of the Parliament aggregate £89,000,000, and more than fill the formidable gap I have described. I thought it would interest the House to realise, what changes, in fact, had actually taken place in the character of our taxation.