It is a considerable embarrassment to address the House after a speech so impressive in its sincerity as the speech we have just listened to and to express so very well the adherence to the values that I imagine the great majority, if not everyone in this House, adheres to. I am unable to follow him on many of the points because, though I am testing the capacity of this House to listen to me, there are some topics that Senator Dunne referred to that I do not know about and would find it quite difficult to make up well.
At the same time, while the speech was impressive in its sincerity, it emphasised rather the problem with which we are all faced. An aspect of that problem to which I have been giving consideration, particularly since I thought it had some special relationship to the Bill before the House, is the matter of inflation with particular reference to the deficit in the balance of payments.
I do not apologise to the House or through you, a Chathaoirleach, to Senator Dunne for referring to this matter, because there is here a question of fundamental social justice involved in terms of the distribution of income between different members of this society; just as there is at one remove a fundamental question affecting every member of this society, and that is the possibility that, if we do not curb this inflation and get a proper policy of control of deficits in the balance of payments or a clear view of their cause and their ultimate elimination, then every member of this community, including those on whose behalf Senator Dunne so well addressed himself, will suffer and we will all be in trouble. This is a problem which represents a great social injustice in absolute terms and a great potential danger to economic development and therefore to the well-being of every member of society if it is not coped with.
May I preface what I have to say with a reminder to everyone that this is a problem that a free economy has to face, whether it be an economy administered by a socialist government, a labour government or a conservative government. The clearest-minded administrator of the British economy would have been more dedicated on this, or at least as well dedicated, to the values expressed by Senator Dunne tonight. I refer to the late Sir Stafford Cripps. He appreciated the necessity for controls and clearly saw that controls imposed on one category of persons alone, people bearing a particular economic relationship to the economy, would not be acceptable and would not work, and that there must be an inspiration given to the whole of society if an incomes policy such as Senator Dunne has recommended was to be acceptable by society; a sense of social justice must permeate society and permeate the leadership given to that society if that society was prepared to accept and truly endorse restrictions and controls by taxation or otherwise.
I make no apology for dealing with the social injustice of inflation for the particular reason that it is not a popular subject for a member of an opposition party to direct himself to because it leads inevitably to "What would you have done or not have done if you had been in power?" I direct myself to this theme because I do not see any point in being a Member of this Seanad or any assembly unless I express my mind and my thinking. I do not think I could be of use to this Assembly if I did not express my mind and thinking as fully as they should be expressed at that moment whether it was politically desirable to express it at that moment or not. Perhaps that may make me a very bad politician. My attention is directed at the moment to raising this matter through the House to the country because it is the kind of problem which I see existing. It is a problem that is not being fully faced up to, not being recognised with the clarity with which it should be recognised by the persons in charge of the Government at the moment.
Inflation consists of overspending in terms of available resources. Available resources consist of what is provided by the self-restraint of the community coupled with what borrowings they can make for productive development. The policies which would be required to be designed to please these people who reject the idea of an open economy if spelled out would amount to a pretty stark proposition. I suggest to the House that we are in a factual situation in which we cannot afford to be in anything other than an open economy. If we so wished we could have a controlled economy. We could, as someone recently suggested was required, abandon the policy of free mobility of labour and abandon the policy of free exchange of capital between this country and the rest of the world—from what Senator Dunne has said, I am sure that would not be acceptable to him and that it would not be acceptable to any other self-respecting citizens of the country—the policy of the control of labour and capital and accepting only such growth as would be made possible by a policy of compulsory saving where citizens did not by voluntary restraint provide the required capital.
It is possible to have overspending for a period of time and it may generate economic development that improves the lot of most people. These people may be in the relationship of providers of capital or they may be in the relationship of being employed by the providers of capital. If workers are well organised they may get their share of the benefits of that development but there are people whose position may be substantially damaged by economic development to any degree involving inflation, by a growth of affluence in which they do not share: for example, pensioners whose conditions of pension do not give them any chance of getting supplements; pensioners, from the public services, may, after the usual unfortunate delay, get some restoration but who will not share in the gains.
There will be those who have nobody to protect them: people not organised in employment, people working in small offices who are unfairly treated and there are people who exploit others in our society as everywhere else in the world. There are a number of people living in our society who may be badly or otherwise disabled or who are not particularly able to work because of psychological or other difficulties and whose parents recognised this as being something they had to provide for and took that responsibility on themselves. The funds provided by parents for these people have to be very carefully organised and dealt with if the incomes are to be sufficient to look after them. The affluence generated by an economic development policy which gives rise to uncontrolled inflation deprives them of wealth and money is taken from them.
The thrifty-minded are penalised, particularly the small capitalist—a small capitalist is any man who has any money saved that he could have spent. He puts his money in a bank where it erodes in value. He may put it into savings certificates and, perhaps, these may not erode in value if the rate of inflation is not too excessive but people who take out life policies pay a premium in 1969 £'s but what will be their return in 1989 £'s.
Savers suffer when their abstaining from expenditure permits a level of consumption by others at the cost of inflation. Their savings are wasted by others who can borrow their savings. I am not dealing with inflation in relation to this particular Government but all Governments because we are dealing now with governmental currency throughout the world.
Borrowers always benefit from inflation. Inflation encourages people to buy now on the basis that it will cost them more in the future and thus divert resources that could be made available for the better development of the country, and generate employment resulting in better rewards for those employed. It is inflation too, generally, which causes high interest rates, and the current rate of interest is a fact of life in the free world.
All that is by way of describing as best I can some of the consequences of inflation in absolute terms. If you have a rapid expansion which leads to a serious inflation, it creates a situation in which a monetary and fiscal restraint policy must be applied to restore the balance and to lay the basis for a further expansion. From that point, if one looks at some of the most successfully managed economies in the world—I have not been as far away as Tokyo but some people not too far from this House have been there—Japan, in the past 20 years, has multiplied by ten the real income of her people. What Keynes said can truly be said to have been followed up by Japan with logic; that is to say that, when restraints are required to be imposed, they were imposed. In Japan during various years investors in its economy ran into great difficulties because, in fact, their returns were not coming home because the authorities were imposing the restraints which were necessary so that the future development of the economy could go forward on a sound basis.
It is well, if I may, to summarise a couple of recent accounts of our present situation. The Central Bank reports are there for anyone to check. In looking at the current Central Bank report we are not looking at the report from the bank of 1948, without mention of persons, but we are looking at the Central Bank report whose Governor is the man who drafted the original development plan for this country. He signs this report and says in it:
The inflation instead of being brought under control appears to be getting worse.
He gives instances of this and says:
There are signs of a strong upturn in consumption in the June quarter. The adverse trade gap has widened. The balance of payments deficit has increased. There is a fall in the ratio of external reserves to annual import excess from 216 per cent in August of 1968 to 173 per cent in August, 1969. There has been an upsurge in costs and prices of consumer goods and services in the year of 8.4 per cent.
I may remark this has been exceeded since the foundation of this State in one year only. That was in the year following the Korean war and we know what special consequences came from that. The situation described in the Central Bank report which appeared in September, and we are now in December, is that we had a dangerous inflationary situation. Our rate of increase in money income was three times the rate of increase of real output.
This was followed shortly afterwards by a document, the quarterly commentary of the Economic and Social Research Institute. I pause at this moment to say it being so very popular to speak ill of America in her trials and tribulations that we owe very much to the Economic and Social Research Institute for the degree of enlightenment it has spread with regard to our affairs. I personally have learned a great deal from its publications. It was, of course, established by American money. The Economic and Social Research Institute on the assumption that credit is now more firmly under control and on the assumption that exports rise more rapidly than seems likely this year say we are likely to have a deficit of £70 million. Incidentally, it would appear from adding and subtracting, an operation at which I am not particularly good, that the Central Bank estimated in their autmumn report that the deficit would be £62 million. The Minister for Finance in volume 241 of the debates of the other House said he believed on the 29th October that the deficit would be £55 million broadly in line with his Budget forecast. In fact, I believe he has adjusted that figure somewhat upwards. It does not matter whether it is £60 million to £70 million as the figure is very serious. The figure is made much more serious, however, by the fact that the Economic and Social Research Institute's report which was written by people who in the past have viewed the trend of the economy not always in a pessimistic way and this may have permitted a degree of inflation to develop, perhaps, by absence of criticism. In this issue it takes it squarely in although it leaves the policy decisions to the Government that the external deficit for the second consecutive year in 1970 will run at £70 million.
It made certain assumptions with regard to this figure. That is to say, assumptions which if not correct, if there was an adversity about them, would make the figure greater and the matter would be that much worse. One of the assumptions was that price rise in the coming year would drop by about 25 per cent. The price rise would not be over 8 per cent but a rise of 6 per cent. In a moment I will give the House, if I may, some of the other assumptions which they made and the other assumptions I make that might not be achieved. Allowing the present trend to continue, it says that this country is running with no safety margin and if the capital inflow which is financing the development were to be reduced we would have a dramatic fall in external assets.
A number of assumptions were made. It was assumed the credit situation would be brought under control and remain under control without damaging confidence. This may be an assumption which will be attained. It will be a painful one for the economy to experience. It will be a difficult one to maintain and even if maintained we will have a deficit of £70 million. It assumes there will be a slight slackening in the rate of growth of money earnings. I am not sure if I inferred from what the wise man— Senator Dunne—who spoke before me said he would agree that he sees from his apprehension of the reactions of his colleagues there would be in the coming year a slight slackening in the rate of growth of money earnings. It assumed there would be no export recession and there has been some optimism in this matter generated by the highly optimistic report of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research in Britain which optimism for me was entirely pricked when I read the Financial Times analysis of it in its issue of November 28th. It assumed there would be no decline in tourism. It assumed there would be disruptive strikes. It made an assumption there would be nothing to disturb the size and nature of the capital inflow.
It also assumed there were no errors in projection. I hope there are no errors in projection of an adverse kind. It is difficult to make any projection which does not have an error of some kind but I would assume, because those people are really responsible, that they appropriately discounted their various calculations in the correct directions in this situation. I should like to add a number of other assumptions which seem to me necessary to make. It must be assumed that there would be no political changes in the United Kingdom, in the USA or anywhere else in the world with an adverse affect on this country. There has been a great inflow of money into Ireland in the last ten years or so, especially in the last five years, an inflow which has been affected very much by the kind of taxation policy which has been pursued by Britain but what if there is a change in Government and there is an outflow of individuals returning home? It is worth noticing that according to the most recent figures I saw —and I only pursued the matter as far as a Senator need pursue it—there is a relatively slow rate in the growth of interest and dividend payments out of this country to abroad which is interesting but there has been a very considerable increase in the income from investments abroad made by residents of this country. I suggest that this growth in income from investments abroad may to some degree of significance, which has not been estimated or if estimated the estimates have not been published, due to people taking up residence in Ireland whose considerable incomes are brought home here, taxed and subscribe to the national revenue and also are available to balance the budget or the national economy. In fact the figure that I have, the one for 1967, shows that the income from investments abroad was £47 million representing one-sixth of the total trade merchandise exported from the country.
There is another point to be made here. With regard to this outflow of income from the country because of the kind of industrial development policy we have pursued, perhaps had to pursue in our circumstances, in fact I, for one, would have supported it. It would have liked to have seen more information about its effects as it went forward, but I suspect one of the consequences certainly I know in relation to one particular country from which much of the investment has come has been to trap in Ireland the profits made from the export enterprises of these companies. That means that there is locked up in this country money which if it were declared by way of dividend and paid out to the investor would be susceptible to taxation in their own country and therefore he would lose the benefit of the export tax relief which he gets while he traps it here and so he awaits the day when he will break up his company and liquidate it and take it home and pay a lower capital gains taxation. We have a lot of that kind of money locked up here. There are a number of these items which could be affected by various events. For example if, the Lord forbid, we had any extension of the trouble in Northern Ireland it would have a disruptive effect on our income from tourism. If we have disruptive strikes this will have a serious effect. On account of the profession into which I was thrown when too foolish to sensibly choose another I do not in fact find everyone as they offer themselves to me. There are some fishermen and fisherwomen around the place looking for and perhaps finding troubled waters who could have in their ultimate consequences bad effects. It is possible, for example, if the matter of the administration of justice is not successful, did not maintain the confidence of people, that money would be taken out and it could not be stopped from being taken out, that people would leave with their capital and that the savings made by export companies and retained here would go. I have been seriously concerned by the burnings and threats to foreigners. This is quite contrary to Irish policy, it is quite contrary to the national tradition, it is quite contrary to Christian living, it is quite contrary to the whole Judaic Christian tradition which tells one to treat the guest within ones city with more respect than one treats one's neighbours. These people have been badly treated and the people who did it have not been brought to justice. If that policy is pursued and the culprits not brought to punishment and if the Minister for Justice—and this is the only reference I will make to him—is not held in the fullest respect by the whole community the consequences could be bad.
From these words you may perhaps see that I take the situation to be somewhat worse than the recommendations of the Central Bank and the account given by the Economic and Social Research Institute. I shall make my first point on that and I am surprised it has not been made in either of the two publications. It is a point worth making because it concerns matters of communication to everybody concerned—employees, employers, whoever they may be all are involved in our economy. When they see this figure of £70 million of a deficit they will say: "What about it? Those fellows have plenty of money, can they not do something about it?" It is not as simple or easy as that because there is the extraordinarily important matter of confidence. I take the view that the development of the last 20 years and without wishing to get into controversy with my friends on my right the change took place 20 years ago when our party introduced the capital budget; indeed it took some years to get going. I agree we had our little local difficulties, which I believe was the expression, they got going at any rate and they only succeeded to the extent that they have succeeded because of confidence. There is no good in my not acknowledging that there has been a degree of success attained in the industrial policy that has been pursued although we may not have measured the adverse consequences that we must in duty face. It has been successfully pursued because we established confidence in our currency, because we established the confidence of the world in our country's good sense in our ability to be stable and to make the right decisions and not to be irrational. If one looks back to the situation prevailing in the early 1930s when it was not possible to make a borrowing in London without a kind of concession being made by the Government which the Government was not prepared to make and where the Government of South Africa—at that time it was Herzog, who was not the father of the present Herzog as somebody said he was recently, had to make concessions to the British because he was dependent on the Controllers of Funds in South Africa for his money who were English and not Afrikaaner, at that time. This matter of confidence is very important. To come back to those figures, if the deficit in the balance of payments were not £70 million this year but £20 million as it was last year the inflation would be much more this year than it was last year, much more than the eight per cent it has already exceeded. The inflow of goods which represents this balance of payments deficit has been to some extent mopping up the money supply which if it were not being mopped up would in fact make for higher prices. This is a fact to look at because it means we are in a more dangerous situation than we realise, a situation demanding much earlier action than has been taken.
There is another point that arises from a remark of the Governor of the Central Bank in an address he made to the Cork Chamber of Commerce. It develops a theme which is only slightly referred to in the Central Bank Report. He said that the funds that flow into the economy from nonassociated banks—the merchant banks, hire purchase companies and so on— who are drawing in their money on a short-term basis and generally employing it for consumer financing have the same effect, although I would not follow him fully here personally, as external borrowings. I take it what he means here is external borrowings of a non-development kind but perhaps the report of what he said is not adequate. To the extent that these have financed consumption, these have added to the internal level of demand and made the problem of final financing their return the more difficult.
According to my calculations, and I hope I shall not trouble you too much by giving these, the position in 1963 was that we had a deficit of £22 million; we had external assets available to the Government and Departments of £234 million. The deficit was covered ten times and I prefer the ratio of external assets of the banking system relative to the deficit which takes in the invisibles as well as the visibles to the ratio applied by the Central Bank when it makes a relationship between external assets and trade figures. The figure based on the same formula for August last at the lower of the two figures that seem likely to emerge—£65 million deficit—with the latest figure I have for external assets of £267 million means that at the outcome of this year our external assets, at the end of a period of six years, only covered our deficit four times. We have financed deficits, taking the 1965 figure, from 1963 a total of £181 million with a large intake of capital and our external reserves have risen during that time by only £30 million.
I should like to know the composition of the capital inflow. No doubt the Department of Finance have the best available information but it would be helpful if people could know the position. If I am shown a man with many assets and he tells me that so much of his own money is in it and when I ask him what are the terms of borrowing and if he replies to me "I do not really know; I do not know if I have to pay it back next Tuesday, in two years time or whether it is a 20 or 50 year loan", my attitude to his finances will be remarkably affected.
We do not know how much of the money in our banking system is hot money, avoiding taxation elsewhere, which would have to be covered. The Economic and Social Research Institute say we are leading to a situation in which the apparent real standard of living must be reduced, whether through devaluation or severe deflation. I wish to say as emphatically as I can that unless it is a very carefully-planned operation from strength through time —and I see no argument anywhere yet which would seem to me to justify even such a policy—devaluation would be absolutely unthinkable for this country in the involvement we have with the world economy, having regard to our size, the forces operative in the world concerned to assist Britain and to help her to maintain a not too severe devaluation could not be relied on to come to our assistance. In my view all the steps that should be taken must be taken as soon as possible to prevent the unthinkable devaluation. As St. Paul said, let it not be so much as mentioned among you.
I recognise in any economy, and this is the first time in my view anything serious has emerged here, the necessity of economic management. It is very easy to talk about what should be done. We have a real problem here and I discern in some of the Minister's statements that he is trying to not strike at confidence and at the same time perhaps to prepare the way for measures. I think he is taking too long about it and I do not understand some of his statements. I do not see how on the 29th October in response to a Question in the Dáil at column 2043 of the Official Report which I have already quoted, he said it might be necessary to take some action between now and December, and how he could go to the Stock Exchange seven days later and bind himself not to introduce an autumn budget. I am not harrying anybody for an autumn budget, but I am harrying the Government for a statement of their policy of how and when they intend to apply it, with regard to a reserve situation which only covers four times the current deficit of the balance of payments. On November 6th the Minister said he could find no comparable need as in 1968 for immediate fiscal measurements, although the deficit on his own Estimate is going to be more than 2½ times what it was in 1968. There may be special reasons for justifying measures when a deficit is £20 million, which are not justified when the deficit is £65 million, the more probable figure.
I should like our intelligence to be respected and to be given these reasons. I would join very much in support of what Senator Dunne said, that political parties and a lot of other people in charge of capital, managers and people in the business of persuasion, insufficiently respect the intelligence of our people. Much more cooperation would come from them if a full and courageous statement were made to them of all that is implied even if that involved—and this has been done in the history of this State —political damage to those who had to make that statement. It is their plain duty to take whatever political consequence comes. I do not wish this to be a political speech, but the truth is the truth, even if political benefits may be garnered from it, that only if they are prepared to gather all the political consequences will growth take place. Let them face the political consequences now and respect the good sense and the patriotism of the Opposition parties and of other people in the country in not taking unfair advantage of what decisions they may have to take. I think he should have denied himself the satisfaction of talking at this time, as he did on that evening, of the doubling of capital investment over the last ten years. This is the sort of language which if I did not have some little training earlier in my life in this field would make me say: "If they have done that then everything is in order" but I do not think that this is the sort of language that should be uttered by a Minister for Finance.
He went to the bankers' dinner on 15th November. I heard him myself and he made a very good speech, or rather I was amused by his earlier remarks but possibly confused by my hosts' hospitality, so that I did not take in the full sense of his remark that "economic development must not be held back by credit restraints" until I read it later. That is the sort of thing he was saying on that night rather than that we must slow down economic development so that we do not endanger confidence, and take measures to slow it down.
He went to some other meeting on 19th and again made an amusing speech and again I was there—I mix in excellent society sometimes. He said that the increase in the Republic's import excess is only marginally attributable to consumer goods and is in the main accounted for by increased productivity within the country. If you are trying to tell a lot of people who see no reason why they should not have incomes corresponding to the kind of thing they see lying behind the expenditure, they are witnessing, that they should not at this time seek these increases, if the economy is in a state of affluence but you know that this affluence is delicately balanced and that if this delicate balance is lost there will be a toppling over damaging everyone, it is your duty not to talk in such a way as to suggest that it is only marginally attributable to the fact that you bought a piano last week which you should not have bought at all but should have put away to protect the economy for next year.
This leads me to the point that I do not think I would be in this House were it not that I was convinced that our ills, such as they are require a commitment to a policy of social justice of a peculiarly definite kind. Looking back to the earlier years of my life I think that the society here was happier when we were not overall as well off. The moment we all got mad was when we were standing in the bus queues and Ministers passed in their State cars and shortly afterwards there were a few people who had been watching carefully the different ways of putting money into their pockets without paying the proper taxes on it and they began to spend it. This sense of justice is most important and can only be conveyed by someone who believes in the importance of justice. It can only be conveyed if you do not just talk about it. Talk is a kind of action, I suppose, if it is addressed to people who you believe may be in a position of going on and acting and are in a position to act, but it is real action that matters. In saying as I do that this commitment to social justice must be there, I have to recognise the economic difficulty facing its full and satisfactory realisation.
As I understand the working of the economy—and I am ready to be shown otherwise if there is some alternative system—we are not in the kind of closed situation that the Americans have who might be a little worse off if things could be better distributed and yet that be the right policy to pursue. We are in a situation that if we pursue without regard to efficiency a policy of social justice we may not have the wealth to distribute that we are so concerned to distribute. While the ultimate priority is clear that social justice as an objective must come before the actual creation of wealth we must first create the wealth, so that we must be careful that our policy of social justice will not distribute or reduce wealth so much as to lessen what is there to be distributed. We know that there are certain situations in this country, people living in conditions which are quite unsuitable and unsatisfactory, and even at the present time I would say that such are not tolerable and that irrespective of the effect on economic growth those problems must be solved.
The first task of any Government at this moment is to justify themselves to the people to win this support and to generate a national spirit such as—I am using the very language that Senator Keery used because I am afraid this is a job in which the Government are failing—"drawing out the national spirit, which would lead to economic development and provide for the social development depending on that economic development".
A climate of opinion has got to get convinced about the people in power —and, mind you, it cannot be ignored that in a democratic society in a certain sense the Opposition parties are always in power too because they help to create the conditions which make possible the policies pursued by a government. There are certain topics which the Houses of the Oireachtas have with certain minor exceptions over a long period of years not ever dissented from, because they are the most fundamental, matters of law and order. If it is possible to have unity between parties on this sort of matter without someone throwing out a taunt that these are the two conservative parties getting together, I do not think this is a matter of left or right but a matter of all parties of recognise that in this situation we have to act. We have very little to spare and very little spare capacity and we must protect our selves, we must preserve stability and secure confidence and we cannot do that without the support of all the people.
What is required? I am not in the Government and I do not know all that they know. It is well-known that those in politics in opposition, Deputies and Senators, think it wiser politics not to say much of what they would do but that line does not attune with what I have been saying, I hope that I am keeping within the limits of the debate in saying that obviously the first thing is the matter of confidence, and second to confidence and necessarily parallel to it is the creation of the prices and incomes policy to which Senator Dunne referred. This means an urgent high level discussion between people, I would say by all Parties as well as the Government Party, with a view to having a shared policy on this.
We know that our institutions are defective in this matter of both prices and incomes. I have expressed it in this Assembly since I came here that the Fair Trade Commission is not value for money. The Minister replied that it was, and he did it in a very well-mannered way so that I did not want to pursue the matter by reference to my own experience with that body. Industry and Commerce shares with the Fair Trade Commission the administration of the prices and incomes policy. This is a limited function, and a limited amount of expertise is gathered there as in the Fair Trade Commission. An Irish manufacturer has to give notice of his intention to increase his prices. A wholesaler and a manufacturer has to give notice of his intention to increase his wholesale margins, but then we are not given information as to what was asked for or told how justifiable those costs were, how tested they were and what conditions they had to comply with. To this degree there must inevitably arise suspicion in the minds of people who see prices rising. The cost to the economy of trying to control retail prices is such that I certainly would concentrate more on the matter of competition and the elimination of monopolistic practices, perhaps laying down a code of rules under the Fair Trade Commission to ensure that where you have monoply retail situations they are not able to extort unnecessary profits from unnecessary and unjustifiable price rises.
With regard to the Labour Court, I am trying to speak only of things I know something about and I really do not know anything about it, but it would seem that as an institution— perhaps it is due to the legislation, perhaps to the background economic situation—it has not succeeded in its function. Perhaps I could make a point here which may be relevant and should be noted. The first economic programme was called The First Economic Programme, and the second was called The Second Programme for Economic Expansion. The third programme was called The Programme for Economic and Social Expansion. That is very significant and there I think lies a fundamental error.
This programme followed the publication of the policy for a Just Society by this Party on whose behalf I am speaking. I believe this was an error of judgment rather than of heart and the draftsmen of that first programme were more concerned in pulling the country out of the stagnation that they believed it to be in than in recognising the priorities with regard to social policy.
The next matter to consider is the effect of conspicuous consumption in a country like this. It is not bad to have a lot of money but to spend it conspicuously or selfishly is bad. It can be well spent by backing good projects, by helping one's family or by helping others. It is not having money that is bad but how it is spent. There are those who say that if we want to attract people to the country whose presence here yield a substantial benefit to the economy, it is difficult to deal adequately with this but it must be dealt with to some degree. It is necessary to take a sensible line. I am not recommending taxation of any kind to the House. Indeed, I do not know if it would be in order for me to speak about taxation.
