6
It will not do to say that new revenue measures are
"clearly inevitable".
are always choices.
Secretary will say.
Only death is inevitable. In life there
When I say that I know what the Financial
He said it in 1983 and though I answered
it in advance in 1984 he said it again in his winding-up speech
- "which hospital, which school etc. would you cut?" This time
I will quote his own final paragraph in the Budget Speech
"... literally no limit can be put on
expenditure representing social aspirations
unless tight controls are maintained on the taxpayers' money and on the levying of new
But every new proposition must be
subject to test by two simple questions.
What are the priorities? Where is the money
coming from?
taxes
...
Deficit finance is a
profligate's refuge
• • •
18
I couldn't agree more and of course it applies to existing
projects as well as new ones. No project is sacrosanct just
because it once got into the Public Works Programme nor is it
absolutely essential that it should go ahead this year rather
than next year or even later. If an expenditure-based Budget
will balance in 1986-87, fine. If not, new revenue measures
are not inevitable. There is an alternative.
The reason why all this is so speculative is that the
Financial Secretary has again not given us any figures for the forecast period. So I come back again to my fundamental
complaint that the Budget statement and related documents are
neither self-explanatory nor self-contained. Forecast figures
must exist. He has said "we look as far ahead as possible in
our budgetary processes". But who are "we"? Obviously the
Members of this Council are not included. It is unfortunate
that the Financial Secretary has failed to place the budget in
the context of the future. Of course that cannot be done with
precision but the FS has given us no projections even for 1986-87, let alone for the forecast period.
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