§ 70. Sir A. CHAMBERLAINasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer in which report and paragraph of the Public Accounts Committee during the period when the President of the Board of Trade was chairman was the continuance of the relief of Consuls from Income Tax under a Treasury concession criticised?
§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Philip Snowden)I do not know of any report of the Public Accounts Committee which referred expressly to the relief of Consuls from Income Tax. What I had in mind was the Committee's well-known desire that the extra-statutory exemption of which this was an instance should be strictly limited and legalised whenever possible. Numerous references can be found to the subject in the recent proceedings of the Committee, as for instance in their Minutes of Evidence of the 28th February, 1928, Questions 121 and 150, and 29th January, 1929, Questions 86 and 103.
§ Sir A. CHAMBERLAINThe Chancellor of the Exchequer referred specifically to a report of the Public Accounts Committee made while his colleague the President of the Board of Trade was Chairman. He now refers me only to the minutes of evidence. Is there no passage in the report such as he led us to suppose existed?
§ Mr. SNOWDENAs I stated before, the Public Accounts Committee have—I believe on many occasions—drawn attention to this question of extra-statutory concessions and have recommended that as far as possible legal sanction should be given to them. One part of their report deals with a matter which I believe arises from the right hon. Gentleman's next question and perhaps I had better wait until then before referring to it, but the point which appears to be in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman is as to whether there has been a specific reference to the case of consuls. Well, perhaps my first reference to that matter did give that impression, but, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, I later on corrected that, and said that the case of consuls was included in the general reference which the Committee had made.
§ Sir A. CHAMBERLAINI am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his statement and indeed I put down my question in order to give him an opportunity of correcting what I thought was a misapprehension. May I ask him whether there is any other reference on which he relies except the one in the report of 1913, to which he has referred, made at a time when the President of the Board of Trade was not only not Chairman but was not even a member of the Committee?
§ Mr. SNOWDENI think that the reply to the next question, in which the right hon. Gentleman asks if reports have been made to the Accountant-General in regard to how far these recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee have been carried out, will probably clear up that point.
§ 71. Sir A. CHAMBERLAINasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether all cases covered by the recommendation which concludes paragraph 14 of the Second Report of the Public Accounts Committee, 1913, have now been given statutory sanction; if not, what cases still remain uncovered; and whether a periodical return of such cases is made by the Board of Inland Revenue to the Treasury and is accessible to the Comptroller and Auditor-General, as recommended by the Committee?
§ Mr. SNOWDENNo, Sir, it has not been practicable to give statutory sanction to all of them. Periodical returns are made by the Board of Inland Revenue to the Treasury and are accessible to the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The last returns were made in 1928 and were dealt with by the Comptroller and Auditor-General in his report on the Revenue Departments Appropriation Accounts for 1927.