§ Now I turn to the expenditure actually incurred in 1937–38. The Fixed Debt Charge of £224,000,000 was sufficient last year to provide not only the cost of interest and management of the National Debt but also a substantial sum, namely, £7,767,000, towards the statutory Sinking Funds. The remaining charge for this fund, namely, £2,777,000, was also met from revenue, making a total charge for interest and management and Sinking Funds of £226,777,000. Payments to Northern Ireland came to £8,887,000 as against £8,000,000 in the Budget. Miscellaneous Consolidated Fund services at £3,115,000 were within £100,000 of the 47 Estimate; and, as I have already explained, it turned out that no payment was due to the Post Office Fund.
§ Supply Services showed a very large saving, amounting to £22,333,000, as compared with the Budget estimates. The Committee will, of course, understand that when I say Supply Services this short-spending has nothing to do with Defence expenditure. The sums voted last year from revenue for the Defence Departments, amounting altogether to £198,000,000, were fully used. It is the loan money of £80,000,000 for Defence which was utilised only to the extent of £65,000,000 last year. These Supply Services to which I am referring are Civil Supply Services, and these savings arise on various Civil Votes. Of these the largest was a saving of £8,500,000 on unemployment assistance. Then last year's Estimates included a margin of £10,000,000 for Civil Supplementary Estimates. Of this £3,600,000 was in fact required. The other savings make up a substantial total, but they are not individually very large; in some cases indeed they represent underspending which will have to be made good this year. The total expenditure, therefore, met from revenue last year, came to £843,794,000, as against an estimate of £862,848,000. The final result, as the Committee will see, is that revenue exceeded expenditure by £28,786,000.
§ If one asks oneself broadly how that balance has come about, the answer is, as my analysis shows, that it is really due to three causes, which have operated in about equal proportions. First, the revenue last year as a whole exceeded expectations. Secondly, demands for unemployment assistance were considerably less than had been forecast. Thirdly, supplementary demands for ordinary expenditure did not come forward to the extent anticipated. There you have three errors in calculation, and the Committee will see that they all three operated the same way, in the way favourable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It usually happens that the various divergencies between estimate and realisation cancel one another out, but last year, as it happens, these divergencies all operated in the one favourable direction; and I make the melancholy reflection as I pass that it would be imprudent to hope that any 48 mistakes I make now will all operate in the same favourable sense.