§ Q5. Mr. Marksasked the Prime Minister if he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission on Taxation, with special reference to tax on added value.
§ The Prime MinisterNo, Sir.
§ Mr. MarksWill my right hon. Friend institute a limited inquiry to assess the comparative effects on prices of S.E.T. and the value-added tax which the Conservatives would introduce? Will he also investigate those wholesalers and retailers who put substantial increases on prices and blamed S.E.T.?
§ The Prime MinisterLike the rest of the House, I have some difficulty in knowing what Conservative policy would be in this matter. They seem increasingly coy about a V.A.T. Dealing with these matters with the facts available to him, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer challenged them about the very wide range of goods on which they had said up to that time price increases of 4s. in the £ would be involved—children's clothes, coal, coke, electricity, gas, rail and bus fares, and his estimate of the number of civil servants. We have not had a reply from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to the question put by my right hon. Friend and repeated by me a fortnight ago.
§ Mr. ThorpeDoes the Prime Minister not agree that it is a profundly bad system to introduce a new tax and then, a year later, ask a professor to take two years reporting on how it is working? Without derogating from the right and duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make up his own mind on taxation, would it not be a good idea to have a Select Committee continuously reviewing cur archaic tax laws?
§ The Prime MinisterWe have abundant facilities for debating these matters here. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman's strictures directed to this side of the House might have been applied in relation to an Opposition who announced that they would introduce a V.A.T. and set another professor to work for two years to prove that they could not.