NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (Hansard, 13 June 1974)

§ Q4. Mr. Skinner
asked the Prime Minister what further plans he has for taking the chair at the NEDC.

§ The Prime Minister
I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave on 9th May to the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Lamont).— [Vol. 873, c. 579.]

§ Mr. Skinner
Is my right hon. Friend aware that most of us on this side of the House appreciate that he is a terribly busy man and we would not want him to chair the NEDC unnecessarily? Will he consider sending my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry to chair the next meeting? Perhaps my right hon. Friend could then spell out to the well-heeled industrialists represented there that they have been receiving upwards of £4 million a day from the taxpayer's pocket and the housewife's purse—[An HON. MEMBER: "Rubbish."]—and he could remind them of that well-known Tory slogan "No taxation without representation".

§ The Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend knows, the chair is usually taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as was the practice under the previous Government, but from time to time the Prime Minister takes it, as I did many times between 1964 and 1970. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry almost invariably attends the meetings, but I think it is right that the Chancellor and occasionally the Prime Minister should take the chair. I do not think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of Stale for Industry needs the platform provided by the chair of the NEDC to make clear the position that my hon. Friend wanted brought to the attention of industry.

§ Mr. Robert Carr
Will the Prime Minister make sure that if his right hon. Friend goes to the NEDC for any such purpose he will also make clear how many millions of pounds a day industry pays into the national Exchequer by means of taxation, and assure the country that that is many times more than it takes out?

§ The Prime Minister
I did not think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was trying to make a case that industry did not pay taxation, but I thought that some of the figures produced recently suggested that over a period of years rather more went out than came in.