§ Mr. Ridleyasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make unemployment benefit taxable.
§ Mr. Robert Sheldon:When the present National Insurance Scheme was introduced the then Labour Government legislated to bring all short-term benefits within the tax charge. But the attempt to tax these benefits was abandoned in 1949, 265W when they were exempted, because of the practical difficulty of enforcing the liability. Since then the matter has been carefully examined on a number of occasions, but so far no satisfactory method of taxing the benefit has been found.