House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Apr 1989

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together with the immediate impact of the Chancellor's own chosen anti-inflationary weapon of interest rates, have all ensured further twists to the current inflationary spiral. The attempts to mitigate the rise in inflation in the Finance Bill, by means of the alarming decision not to uprate the duty on tobacco and alcohol, pale into insignificance beside that overall picture. That picture shows clearly that a Government who set out to make the lowering of inflation their target, their principal goal, their judge and jury, have roundly failed in that task.

What of the high interest rate policy that the Chnancellor has chosen in response to the problem? He has chosen it with three apparent objectives-- to help finance the balance of payments deficit and coterminously to keep the exchange rate high, to try to dampen demand, and indirectly to influence the inflation rate. It is a blunt and inadequate instrument at the best of times. To rely so heavily, so exclusively and with such blinkered vision on that one policy instrument alone is sheer economic madness.

That policy is leading the Government and the Chancellor into deeper and deeper trouble. With interest rates already rising in Germany, and likely to rise in Japan, with bank lending still rising sharply, and consumer spending obstinately high, with a continuing deterioration in the balance of payments and with a blind attachment to interest rates as his only weapon, there are likely to be even further interest rate rises ahead, bringing with them further mortgage misery for home owners, further investment difficulty for small businesses and the spectre of recession.

Yesterday's Select Committee report has been rightly much quoted in the debate, except of course by the Chief Secretary. The report pointed out that the Chancellor was walking a tightrope between inflation and recession. It is a tightrope of his own making, determined directly by his own decisions and policies. He cannot remain on it for ever. His policies dictate that he cannot avoid either the prospect of inflation or that of recession without embracing the other. On all these fronts--on the balance of payments, on inflation and on interest rates--the Government's performance has been and continues to be lamentable.

It is against that background that the fiscal decisions in the Finance Bill need to be viewed and judged. The balance between monetary and fiscal policy is clearly seen by the Select Committee. Last year's fiscal decisions directly fuelled demand. They were not only unfair but imprudent. We said so at the time. They staggeringly bettered the already better off. This year's Finance Bill does nothing to redress the balance, nor does it do anything to address the overall and pressing needs of the economy.

Let us lay to rest one myth right from the start. On 15 March the Chief Secretary said :

"We"--

that is, the Conservatives--

"are the party of low taxation".--[ Official Report, 15 March 1989 ; Vol. 149, c. 429.]

That claim is nonsense. The Tory party has perpetrated a great fraud on the nation. By adjusting the marginal rates of income tax downwards whilst at the same time raising other forms of taxation, it has hoodwinked many people into thinking that their taxes are lower. They are not. The people are beginning to rumble the Government. In 1978-79, before the first Tory Budget, taxes took just over 34 per cent of GDP. Now they take 37.5 per cent., effectively a 10 per cent. increase in the tax burden over 10

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years. The Finance Bill ensures that the percentage will remain the same. Indeed, Lloyds Bank Economic Bulletin estimates that the burden may even rise by a further per cent. in the coming year. Interestingly, that bulletin also points to the adverse impact of the poll tax this year in Scotland and next year in England and Wales. It says :

"The community charge will wipe out the lightening of the income tax burden over the last decade, effectively cancelling out a large part of the value of personal income tax allowances."

That is on top of an already tightening tax burden.

If, instead of considering the overall national income, we consider the fate of ordinary householders, and if we take not just income tax, which has gone down, but VAT, rates and national insurance, all of which have gone up directly at Government behest, we see that the average household has found its total tax burden rising from 35.1 per cent. of income in 1978 -79 to 37.3 per cent. in 1988-89. That is from a purportedly low tax party.

Mr. Mans : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that he is misleading the House in saying that the rate of taxation has gone up? Taxation and national insurance have gone down since 1981. The increase that the hon. Gentleman is talking about took place during the first two years of the period that he mentions. Since then the rate has gone down to 37 per cent.

Mr. Smith : I am looking at the record of the Government. It may not have escaped the notice of the hon. Gentleman that the Government, as they claim widely in current circumstances, have been in office for 10 years. I am taking their 10-year record ; I am taking not just income tax and national insurance but the other things that people pay, such as VAT and rates.

Even worse, if we take the way tax changes operated throughout the income spectrum, we find staggering differences between those at the top and those at the bottom. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) charted the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Taking just direct deductions for income tax and national insurance, the tax contribution for a married couple with two children, on half average earnings, has gone up in the past 10 years nearly three times as a proportion of their income. For those on 10 times average earnings, in the same 10-year period their tax burden as a proportion of income has virtually halved. This is not a low tax Government. It is a Government who believe in low taxes for those at the top and high taxes for everyone else.

Of course, the Government got a little worried about that feature of their policy and about the impression that they were giving, especially in last year's Finance Act. So they trumpeted this year's Budget in advance as a Budget for the low paid. It was not. They include one measure that will be of some help, but not very much : the reduction of initial national insurance contributions to 2 per cent. It is not in this Bill, of course, because it is an insurance change. This is welcome, but its inadequacies are none the less manifest. By refusing to alter the contributions regime for employers at the same time as that for employees the Government have kept in place the bunching effect that keeps hundreds of thousands of appallingly paid part-time workers, most of whom are women, at a point just below the figure of £43 a week in earnings. Even those who

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benefit from the 2 per cent. change will in many cases face a corresponding reduction in family credit and housing benefit and end up hardly better off at all. This change, welcome though it is, does very little to solve the problem of the poverty trap.

One other major Budget change is missing from the Finance Bill because it is subject to regulation rather than legislation. The extension of personal equity plan tax relief to the purchase of newly privatised shares is nothing short of a naked bribe to improve the prospects of the flotation of public assets. We ordinary taxpayers will, in effect, be subsidising those people who seek to purchase assets which we already own as citizens. The sellers will be subsidising the purchasers and we shall not be receiving any direct payment for the sale of what we own.

Mr. Stuart Holland (Vauxhall) : Bring back Adam Smith.

Mr. Smith : There is, however, plenty in this 180-clause, 17- schedule Bill quite apart from these two principal exclusions. It is a long Bill. I am tempted to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton -under-Lyne that the size of the Finance Bill is in inverse proportion to the quality of the ideas that the Government have put in it. I am also tempted to agree with the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), who described it as not exactly a user-friendly Bill.

Some of the measures in the Bill are undoubtedly ones to which we give a welcome. Clause 1 brings forward a differential duty on unleaded petrol. We would have wished to see the Government go further, but even some degree of movement is welcome. Ringing declarations of environmental concern from No. 10 Downing street are all very well, but it is about time that we saw some other action on the environment.

Clause 44 brings about the abolition of closed company borrowing relief in relation to business expansion scheme investment. This is a welcome end to abuse, and indeed we demanded it before the Budget. I am pleased to see that the Government have for once taken our advice. BES investors, now overwhelmingly those investing in private rented property--the hon. Member for Dover is right about the way in which that scheme has skewed the whole purpose of the business expansion scheme--were able not only to claim tax relief at the higher rate on their investment but, by using the closed company structure, to claim a further tranche of relief on any borrowing they undertook to finance the investment. In addition, they were set to make a tax-free capital gain after five years. It was money for old rope. We wish that the Government had acted retrospectively and had seen their way to abolish the whole wretched private property scheme altogether, but as far as it goes it is a welcome change.

Mr. Arbuthnot : Does the hon. Gentleman approve of retrospective tax legislation and, if so, where does he see it ending?

Mr. Smith : In this particular instance, yes, of course I approve of retrospective tax legislation and we shall be tabling an amendment to that effect when we come to consider that clause in detail. I point the hon. Gentleman in the direction of clause 167 of the Bill, about which a number of his hon. Friends have spoken and which enshrines retrospective legislation in terms of tax.

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Clause 114 extols the regulatory powers for the control of the lump in the construction industry. It is a useful marginal change in tackling a continuing abuse of the tax system which also acts as a tool for the exploitation of workers.

There are various detailed anti-avoidance measures, provision for employee share ownership plans and partial implementation of the recommendations of the Keith committee. All this is to be broadly welcomed, although we shall want to trawl very carefully and thoroughly through the detail in Committee.

There are many other provisions in the Bill, however, which we shall want to oppose as strenuously and vigorously as we can. The first is the provision for tax relief for private health insurance for the over-60s. By definition, this will be available only to those who are rich enough to afford to take out private health insurance and well enough to be eligible to benefit. It is a precisely targeted benefit, targeted on those in the least financial need and the least medical need, and everyone else will have to pay for it.

Interestingly, a number of hon. Gentlemen, especially the hon. Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) and for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith), have expressed their doubts, along with ours, about the wisdom of this scheme. The only major pleading in its favour from the Conservative Benches came from the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) who seemed to argue for its expansion to include the services provided by the company which he runs. To be fair to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and to the Chancellor, we know that they were very unhappy about the change, however much they now try to shrug it off as unimportant. It was forced on them by No. 10. Perhaps it was even given express authorisation by Mr. Charles Powell and Mr. Bernard Ingham. Perhaps it is also a foretaste of what will shortly happen when Sir Alan Walters returns to take up residence next door to the Chancellor and even closer to the Prime Minister's ear. The proposal for health insurance relief is only the most blatant of a number of atrocious measures in the Bill. Take, for instance, the decision to uprate the personal allowances by only 6.8 per cent.--the very barest minimum required by law which sets the increase by reference to the previous calendar year's inflation rate. As we now know, inflation is nearly 8 per cent., and rising. The real value of the tax threshold has been cut by the clause in the Bill relating to relief. That will have the direct effect of drawing more low-paid workers into tax. There will be about 150,000 more taxpayers as a result of the Bill and that clause. More people will be stuck in the poverty trap.

We should also consider the changes to the schedule E regime contained in clauses 34 to 39. The change from an earnings base for calculation to a receipts base sounds neat and logical. However, it opens up enormous opportunities for tax avoidance over and above the projected substantial loss of £60 million in a full year to the Exchequer, as envisaged in the Red Book.

Our principal criticism of the Bill, of the Budget and of all the associated economic decisions taken by the Government must be that the Bill represents a massively wasted opportunity. It does virtually nothing for the low paid. Last year's Budget was a gravy-train for the rich. The Chancellor should have redressed the balance this year, but he did not.

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The Bill does nothing for the needs of women. It does not remove the iniquitous tax on workplace nursery provision which acts as a direct disincentive to discourage women from joining the work force. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury has told me in answers to questions that he has no idea of the benefit to the Exchequer of the tax. Nor has he any idea of the cost to the Exchequer of the minimal incentives which exist at present for employers to establish nurseries. The Bill should have scrapped that tax, but it did not. I give notice that we shall be seeking to change the Bill to ensure that it does.

The Bill does nothing for the needs of those with children. The House will be aware that yesterday we debated the need to uprate child benefit properly in line with inflation.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : Where were Opposition Members then?

Mr. Smith : I noted from the Division lists that all the Treasury Ministers voted against the amendment tabled by their colleagues yesterday.

The real value of child benefit has already fallen by 12 per cent. since the Government took office. It is now set to fall further. Child benefit still represents the most effective way, by far, of removing poverty. To take the decision alongside this Bill to use the Exchequer's surplus for the virtually useless depletion of the national debt instead of taking the proper action to uprate and improve child benefit shows how sadly perverse the Chancellor's priorities have become.

Above all, the Bill and its associated economic decisions do nothing to tackle the deep-seated economic problems that we face. The catastrophic balance of payments deficit, the imbalance between demand and supply in the domestic economy, the imbalance between the regions and the depleted capacity of manufacturing industry all point to the overwhelming need to ensure that the wealth-creating resources of the economy are boosted. From a Government who have done such grievous harm to our economy over the past 10 years, the Bill will do little to repair and much to intensify that damage.

9.40 pm

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Norman Lamont) : I am glad that the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) eventually mentioned the Finance Bill. I do not mind him taking up too much of my time because I have precious little to respond to as nobody has mentioned the Finance Bill in this debate. When hon. Members talked about the Budget, they tended to talk about last year's Budget, which has somewhat dominated today's debate. I make no complaint about that because last year's Budget was a watershed Budget, the supply side benefits of which will be with us for years to come.

If the Opposition believe that, despite the fiscal surplus that it created, last year's Budget has affected inflation and the current account, it is certainly curious that, just before the Budget, the Opposition put forward a package for tax cuts, higher personal allowances and higher national insurance. It is also extraordinary that, if the Leader of the Opposition believes that this year's and last year's Budgets were irresponsible, he should then advocate, in his response to the Budget, that we should run down the

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budget surplus. One cannot be simultaneously against tax cuts and also in favour of running down the budget surplus. That does not make sense.

In the earlier part of his speech, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, reflecting the confusion of the Opposition, said that it was a mistake to cut taxes. However, in the last few minutes of his speech he said that the burden of taxation was far too high. I wish that the hon. Gentleman could make up his mind which it was. He referred to the proportion of people's income that went in tax. However, as we have debated endlessly in the House, the only reason that a higher proportion of people's income goes in income tax is simply because under the Government incomes have risen so much. I agree that the burden of tax is too high. We want to reduce it. If the Opposition think that the burden of tax is too high, why did they vote against us on every single occasion that we reduced the basic rate of tax?

This year's Budget was quite deliberately cautious because my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's priority is to keep down inflation. Inflationary pressures began to emerge last year. The current account was one sign ; another was the evidence of faster than expected growth. There is already ample evidence that higher interest rates are having the desired effect. The targeted money aggregate, MO, has already slowed down and figures published last week show that the growth rate has fallen for the third month running and provide further confirmation of the sharp slowdown since last autumn. While reducing inflation is primarily a task for monetary policy, it is essential that fiscal policy should support it. That is what the Budget does and that is why we have budgeted for another massive public sector debt repayment this year, which is the same as last year's in total, and, excluding privatisation proceeds, £2 billion more.

A number of Opposition Members suggested that the Government's interest rate strategy would damage industry's investment prospects, but there is no reason why it should because most companies are able to borrow long term. Long-term rates have risen very little, which is an indication of the market's confidence and its view of the long-term rate of inflation. That is why investment intentions in the latest survey by the Confederation of British Industry and in the DTI's investment intention survey remain strong by historical standards.

We have enjoyed a considerable investment boom in British industry over the past decade. Investment has grown by nearly 7 per cent. a year on average in the 1980s, compared to just over 2 per cent. a year in the 1970s. Business investment is now a higher proportion of GDP than ever before. In the 1980s it has been in stark contrast to the 1970s. At the same time, the quality of investment has improved because the net rate of return on capital employed by British industry has nearly doubled since 1981. Excluding North sea companies, it has nearly quadrupled, and, whether including or excluding North sea companies, it is now back to levels that have not been seen for 20 years.

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) asks, "Where is the evidence of the miracle? Where is the evidence of the real sea change in the British

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economy? Where is the evidence of the transformation?" It is there, in the return on capital and the profitability of British industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith), my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) and the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) have commented on the length of the Bill. I must say that, especially as it is about to go into Committee, I share some of their misgivings. Let me point out, however, that some 50 clauses deal with just three measures : the Keith committee recommendations, the abolition of close company apportionment--which I believe will be a major improvement and simplification--and the schedule E receipts, which again will become much easier for taxpayers to operate. Although the legislation to implement the changes is fairly lengthy, I believe that the end result will be much better and simpler.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), who as we all know is a noted author, has been writing recently in Accountancy Age, and has said that the Bill contains no new measures to deal with tax havens and tax avoidance. Perhaps at that stage he had not read the Bill, but he repeated the accusation today. I can only say that the Government's record on closing tax loopholes is a thousand times better than that of Labour Members when they were in government, for all their humbug and rhetoric. They gave us no credit last year for abolishing the forestry loophole. This year's Bill abolishes capital gains tax rollover relief on gifts. It also deals with the close company provisions, the schedule E receipts provisions, the provisions relating to switches between offshore funds, the business expansion link scheme and, indeed, the cap on tax relief for occupational pension schemes. I am all in favour of such schemes, but I feel that there is a case for limiting relief at the top end. It has been one of the biggest tax shelters for the wealthiest in the country.

Did the Opposition acknowledge that? Not for a minute. Far from recognising what the Budget and the Bill do, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East had the cheek to refer to "yet another Budget for the rich".

Let me point out that in this year's Budget the full year cost of the income tax and national insurance changes of over £4 billion will definitely help those on low incomes, and that well over half the total amount will be given to tax units with incomes below £15,000 a year. The percentage increases on net incomes show that the low paid will benefit by twice as much as the high paid. The net incomes of people earning £5,000 and £10,000 a year will increase by twice the percentage of those of people earning £25,000. The measures that we have taken on national insurance are the most effective way of helping the lower paid.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) referred to the measures designed to level out the playing field between different forms of savings. The changes in life assurance to which he referred are designed to achieve, among other things, a regime that is a little more on all fours with direct investment in shares. The changes in personal equity plans criticised by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury will, I believe, be profoundly attractive to investors, and, indeed, have been given a positive welcome by PEP managers and unit trusts. The hon. Gentleman seems to think it is wrong that we should extend the device of PEPs to privatisation, but why not? We want to encourage wider share ownership

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and, by marrying PEPs and privatisation, we can do a tremendous amount to boost wider share ownership in this country.

A number of comments have been made on tax relief for private health insurance. A number of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern), have expressed reservations. Their objections are really in terms of tax policy. However, I must say that the proposed tax relief on health insurance seems to be the only measure in the Bill that gets Labour Members jumping up and down like dervishes. Their reaction has been extraordinarily overdone. They have not come here as guardians of fiscal neutrality, complaining that we are further than ever away from the platonic ideal of the level playing field in savings. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has explained, that is not a readily obtainable ideal. It would be absurd if Labour Members put forward those arguments because they rarely speak in this House except to plead for tax relief or subsidy for something or other.

The main problem for Labour Members is that they believe that private medical insurance is really the exclusive prerogative of the rich. In believing that, they are as out of touch with medical insurance and the health market as they are with housing. About 5 million people--one in 10 of the population--are now covered through private medical insurance. About 600,000 people aged over 60 are covered by medical insurance. Those people can hardly be the super-rich.

I point out that tax relief will be available to non-taxpayers as well. We expect that the majority of those who will take advantage of the system will either be non-taxpayers or basic rate taxpayers. It is perhaps because Labour Members have an exaggerated view of the wealth of people who take out health insurance that they have an exaggerated idea of what the cost of this relief is likely to be to the Exchequer. We believe that the cost of the relief will be less than £100 a person, and most people will be taking out budget policies. That sum of £100 a person compares with a cost of £850 for National Health hospital service for each person in the country aged over 65. When non-hospital services are added, the cost for each person in the country over 65 is £1,000 per head.

If we can generate just a little additional demand for health insurance, that will relieve pressure on the National Health Service and the resources of the Government. That would be in the interests of the whole country, particularly the users of the National Health Service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield said that the Opposition had not bothered to say much about their policies on taxation. Recently, we have had a few tantalising glimpses of such policies. We have had the odd appearance on the Jimmy Young show by the Leader of the Opposition, and he has made speeches in Preston and Nottingham. What seems to be emerging is that the Labour party objects to our very simple two-rate system of income tax--25 per cent. and 40 per cent. Most of us regard that structure as desirably simple in itself and think that it a good thing that we do not have a single rate of tax over 40 per cent. in the whole tax system.

Labour Members want to introduce a new starting rate and a new reduced rate band that would take us back to the situation in 1978-79 when there were 11 different rates of income tax on earned income and 13 different rates of income tax on unearned income. That is the regime that we

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had before and the regime to which the Labour party wants us to return. They want to finance such a scheme, first, by reversing the top rate tax cuts and then abolishing the ceiling on national insurance contributions. That would amount to about £3 billion. That £3 billion would buy such a narrow band of reduced rate tax that it would be of no benefit, or of benefit to precious few poor people. The drawback of a reduced rate band is that it goes to everyone, including the Duke of Westminster. It goes to all taxpayers. Only 10 per cent. of the cost goes to people whose total income is in the lower rate band.

If one takes people at the very bottom of the scale, earning just enough to pay tax--not necessarily the poorest people, because many of them are part- time workers--they would gain from a reduced rate band, but they would gain far more from the same costs spent on an increase in allowances. That is why, as well as reducing the basic rate, we have since 1979 placed emphasis on increasing allowances. Since 1979, we have increased allowances by some 25 per cent. in real terms. That is in sharp contrast to what happened under the last Labour Government, when the single person's allowance fell by a scandalous 20 per cent. in real terms.

The person at a slightly higher level of income--on three quarters of average earnings and above--will gain more, or as much, from a basic rate cut than from a reduced rate band. A reduced rate band, a new starting rate, is not effective for dealing with poverty because it is badly targeted, its benefits are an illusion, and it would be absurdly bureaucratic--requiring something like 1,300 staff to administer.

I am being absurdly fair to the Opposition, because I am assuming that their £3 billion would be spent on introducing a reduced rate band. However, as right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House know, the Opposition have spent that £3 billion over and over again. Last year, they spent £3 billion increasing pensions, child benefit and benefits generally. This year, they spent it on a reduced rate band. Every time that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East makes a speech, he devotes time to his favourite subjects of training, infrastructure, regional aid and education. An Opposition spokesman for the environment in a single statement spent that £3 billion four times over in just a few minutes, when she promised a £12 billion package to clean up water.

We all know that it is not the Opposition's arithmetic that is at fault. They have only one answer--that it will all come out of the surplus. But we know, and the country knows, that under a Labour Government there would be no surplus. There never has been and there never will be.

It is no wonder that the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) admitted that Labour's tax plans would mean many basic rate taxpayers paying more. He can certainly say that again. The near abolition of the ceiling on national insurance contributions would mean that 2 million people--every one of them a basic rate taxpayer--would suffer a 9 per cent. increase in their marginal rate. They are the people in the middle income groups--the managers, scientists and young professionals--for whom the Labour party claim to speak. The man on one and one half times average earnings would see his national insurance bill increased by £7.60 per week.

All the Opposition's plans are based on the assumption that raising taxes will generate more revenue--but it may not. All our experience shows that cutting taxes from absurdly high rates generates more revenue. After we cut

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the top rates last year, we expected the top 5 per cent. of income taxpayers to contribute some 28 per cent. of revenue. This year, we expect them to contribute 29 per cent., and next year almost 30 per cent. That compares with 24 per cent. from the top 5 per cent. in 1979. The truth is that top-rate tax cuts have become a new and more effective way of clobbering the rich. [Laughter.] Experience shows that Labour Budgets soak the poor and that Conservative Budgets soak the rich. The difference is that, under the Conservatives, the rich can actually afford it.

Unfortunately, the Labour party has ceased to think about taxation. Tax- cutting is an essential part of the process of reversing this country's decline. That is why we stand by the tax cuts that we made last year, which are confirmed in this Bill for the first full year of operation. We believe in an incentive-led economy that will benefit rich and poor alike. It has worked in the past, it will work again, and it is the philosophy embodied in this Bill, which I commend to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time : The House divided : Ayes 271, Noes 186.

Division No. 175] [10 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Aitken, Jonathan

Alexander, Richard

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Amess, David

Amos, Alan

Arbuthnot, James

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

Ashby, David

Aspinwall, Jack

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Baldry, Tony

Batiste, Spencer

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Bellingham, Henry

Bendall, Vivian

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Benyon, W.

Bevan, David Gilroy

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Body, Sir Richard

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Boswell, Tim

Bottomley, Peter

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Bowis, John

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Brazier, Julian

Bright, Graham

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

Browne, John (Winchester)

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

Buck, Sir Antony

Budgen, Nicholas

Burns, Simon

Burt, Alistair

Butcher, John

Butler, Chris

Butterfill, John

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Carrington, Matthew

Carttiss, Michael

Cash, William

Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Chapman, Sydney

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Colvin, Michael

Conway, Derek

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Cope, Rt Hon John

Couchman, James

Cran, James

Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Day, Stephen

Devlin, Tim

Dickens, Geoffrey

Dicks, Terry

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Dover, Den

Durant, Tony

Dykes, Hugh

Evennett, David

Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

Fallon, Michael

Favell, Tony

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

Fishburn, John Dudley

Fookes, Dame Janet

Forman, Nigel

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Forth, Eric

Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

Fox, Sir Marcus

Franks, Cecil

Freeman, Roger

Fry, Peter

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