All I want to say in regard to the Fifth Stage is that this is a bad Bill, that it is a Bill brought in for the wrong purpose. It taxes people who are least able to bear further taxation at this time. It ill behoves the Minister to pretend that this measure is anything more than another aspect of what has been happening in relation to squeezing more money out of the people during the last few weeks.
I am very sorry that we have seen the day when even the field of the health of our people is fair game for the raising of additional taxation by a Government who have got themselves into serious difficulties.
I thought that in whatever other field extra money would be sought the last resort would be the health of the people. It is a sign of how bad things are that we have this Bill now being rushed through in order that the money can be got on 1st January. If they are reduced to doing this in regard to health and payment for health, things must be very bad, worse than the average man believes and, God knows, they are bad enough.
This Bill should also be seen in the context of a budget which will be introduced on this day four weeks, I believe. That budget must be seen as a budget coming only four or five weeks after savage increases in taxation bringing in, it appears, in a full year about £35 million. I can only hope that the budget will have at least some of its teeth drawn by the fact that the Government, in the last two weeks in this House and outside it, by this Bill and otherwise, have raised about £35 million from the people. That figure is more additional taxation than was collected in five successive budgets before it. Neither this Bill, the petrol tax, the butter or the stamp increases or the other things were called a budget but the effect of them was worst than five combined budgets.
I trust this is the end of a bad year and that the Government will begin 1975 with a more open approach in their budget than we have had in these various surreptitious impositions of taxation in the past few weeks.
