HC Deb 15 April 1935 vol 300 c1630

In spite of the reduction of the horsepower tax by 25 per cent. last year, the licence duty on road vehicles produced. £800,000 more than it did in the year before. At the same time the outgoings. of the Road Fund were curtailed by the reduction in programmes which followed upon the crisis of 1931, and the result of that is that on 31st March last there was in the Fund a balance, an apparent surplus, of £7,000,000. I say apparent surplus, because part of it, namely, £2,530,000, was a debt owing to the Exchequer in repayment of the loans in 1931 and 1932. The relevant Acts give the Treasury discretion to appoint the times and conditions of repayment. As I did not require the money last year, I did not give the order for repayment until this year. Accordingly, that sum is included in the estimate of Miscellaneous Revenue which I have already given as £21,500,000. That leaves a balance in the Road Fund of £4,470,000. The need for curtailment of programmes has passed. Already, during last year, we have considerably increased our commitments, and recently the Government, through my hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, invited the local authorities to submit a five years' plan of road construction and improvement. The replies to that invitation are not yet complete, but when they are we hope, with the cooperation of the local authorities, to embark upon a programme which will be considerably in excess of anything that we have yet achieved in a similar period of time. This, of course, will involve additional calls upon the Road Fund, but those calls will only come in as the commitments mature, and in the near future the income of the fund, both present and prospective, will be amply sufficient to meet all the calls that will come upon it.