NB. THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT; BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES, OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY ................................................................................ ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE 27.3.94 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon and welcome to On The Record. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been taken to task today for telling the Tory central council yesterday that his Government's tax rises will cost the average household only a fiver week. Is that the whole truth - and if not, does that sort of claim create a lack of trust on the part of the voter. I shall be talking to Mr. Clarke. ********** But first, the economy. Next week we shall all be paying another eight per cent to heat our homes and cook our meals. That's because of VAT on fuel. If you add the other tax rises we'll be paying the equivalent of seven pence more for every pound we earn. Hardly likely, you might think, to increase our confidence as we come out of recession. When I spoke to the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, this morning I began by asking whether he accepted that confidence was essential to the recovery. KENNETH CLARKE: It's one of the keys to sustained economic recovery but obviously confidence comes when you have the right underlying economic policies which justify that confidence. So, I'm very glad indeed that we have much increased confidence in the prospects for recovery of the British economy now. HUMPHRYS: You say "much increased confidence" do you really believe that? CLARKE: Yes. I mean some of the surveys show these things rising and falling because a lot of the confidence surveys in themselves rather reflect what the people being asked the question have been told in the newspapers the day before. But if you look at the behaviour of the markets, if you look at the prospects for investment in this country, if you look at what is happening to our manufacturing production and our industrial production it's obvious that confidence is steadily coming back into the British economy. HUMPHRYS: But if you look at the most respected index of all - the political and economic EC index - that shows that confidence is at its lowest point since the beginning of 1990 and we were in the middle of the recession then. CLARKE: You've chosen to singularly obscure review there and cloaked it with a very great deal of heavy weight in putting your question, but there are various reviews of confidence, CBI review of industrial confidence here, you get reviews of consumer confidence. If you look at what's actually happening to the economy, outlook for investment is very good because consumer demand is up, because the volume of our exports is rising, certainly quite clearly outside the EEC and we are on course to have steady growth. HUMPHRYS: But this survey looks specifically at consumer confidence. CLARKE: Well consumer confidence, as I said, does tend to vary from survey to survey, because if you ask the ordinary person if they feel confident it does rather tend to depend on what they read in the newspaper that morning. I'm talking about business confidence, I'm talking about runs of confidence figures if you look back. There is no doubt that confidence is much higher than it was twelve months ago. HUMPHRYS: Not surprisingly because you were in the middle of a recession then. CLARKE: Not we weren't in the middle of the recession. HUMPHRYS: Only just coming out of it. CLARKE: We've been coming out of recession now, we're coming up to the end of the eight quarter - two years of steadily coming out of recession with growth getting stronger throughout that time. That's why when you look back you find confidence is much better now than it was twelve months ago. Confidence, I think, is justified because the British economy is at the moment performing better than any other major western European economy. HUMPHRYS: If it's really two years now since we've come out of the recession... CLARKE: Since we started to come out of the recession.. HUMPHRYS: All right, started coming out of the recession. Why, haven't consumers taken that on board? CLARKE: Consumers have taken that on board. HUMPHRYS: Not according to these surveys. CLARKE: ......actually spending more. Consumer spending three per cent or so up compared with twelve months ago.. HUMPHRYS: It's slowed down, you know that figure has slowed down, retail figures have slowed down. CLARKE: What happens when you say that is you get, which is always the case as you have a recovery strengthening, one month's figures is better than another month's figures, you get bobbles within them. But if you look at the worthwhile figures, you look at the trend, you look at three months' figures, you look at twelve months' figures. What we've seen steadily is this rise, amongst other things, in consumer demand but also a steady improvement in all our performance. And actually with respect, there's no reputable economist, no reputable forecaster who doesn't doubt that we are going to continue to be the strongest growing major economy in Europe. HUMPHRYS: But if you look at trends, if you look at the consumer confidence trend which is what I've got in front of me here - this EC index - which most people do take seriously... CLARKE: I take it quite seriously but it's only one.. HUMPHRYS: Well indeed but an important one and what it shows.. CLARKE: It's the only one that gets near to proving your thesis which is why you're placing so much weight upon it but it's isn't brought out by the behaviour of consumers who are buying more. HUMPHRYS: Unlike the figures that Government Ministers produce which don't support their thesis but what this shows quite clearly is a downward trend; confidence is at its lowest point since the beginning of 1990 and then we were even by your estimation in the middle of the recession. CLARKE: I got that as total nonsense. The idea...there may be the odd character out there who feels less confident now than they did in 1990 when we had interest rates of fifteen and a half per cent and inflation very near double figures but I think it's unlikely. The fact is if you look at the present position of the British economy we have been steadily, slowly, coming out of recession for the best part of two years. It's becoming more noticeable all the time and consumers are reflecting it in what they spend. Take car sales, car registrations about eight per cent up on twelve months ago, more new cars being registered in this country on a really quite substantial scale. HUMPHRYS: Who's chosing a specific factor to support his theory now? CLARKE: Well it's rather a good...people who weren't buying cars in the recession go out and buy new cars I think is a little bit more reliable than your rather excessive weight you're plying to that particular index. HUMPHRYS: But look when you ask people what they think is going to happen over the next couple of years, they actually think they're going to be worse off. The last big survey showed that forty per cent of them, forty per cent of households, think they're going to be worse off, only seventeen per cent think they're going to be better off over the next year. That doesn't illustrate great confidence. CLARKE: My job is to prove them wrong over the next two years... HUMPHRYS: So you accept..... CLARKE: If we achieve what I believe we will achieve which is the steadily strengthening of this recovery, fall in unemployment that we're seeing, rise in our output, and keep inflation down to the present leve, I think we'll see steadily rising prosperity spread across most of the country. That is obviously my principle task as Chancellor to create the conditions in which that can happen. HUMPHRYS: But why should they believe you? CLARKE: Because if they look at what's been happening over the last year or two the performance of the British economy is just substantially better than that of others because we've been pursuing the right policies, because we have delivered low inflation, getting the public finances right. A combination of circumstances in which Britain is just more competitive than it used to be in world markets. The main thing holding us back still is the loss of demand in our good markets, in France and Germany where they're still in big economic trouble, which we are coming out of. HUMPHRYS: But you say we're coming of it, we've got a massive amount of ground to make up even to regain the position we were at... CLARKE: I agree with that. I agree with that. But not even to regain the position we were at, but actually to get back on course which I would like to see, of steady year in year out growth and to get unemployment down to the level that I would like it to see. Some things will soon start going through previous peaks, the only one I think we've gone through at the moment, I'm glad to say, is productivity, which is at record all time highs. That means we're particularly competitive, that means I think we'll hold our own and keep in front of the others as recovery across the world develops. HUMPHRYS: But I ask why people should believe you when you say the kinds of things you say, when you express the kind of confidence you express because they've heard this before from the Tory Government haven't they. They heard it from Norman Lamont with his green shoots, which you certainly won't need me to remind you of, they heard it from John Major who said "vote for us on Thursday the recovery begins on Friday" - there's no reason why they should trust you this time is there? CLARKE: Well when those things were said, I think most people believe them.. HUMPHRYS: Really? CLARKE: Well our political.. HUMPHRYS: Despite the evidence to the contrary? CLARKE: Well the Labour at the time that John Major was saying that, the Labour Party were so confident of recovery they were promising to spend thirty five billion pounds of taxpayers' money. HUMPHRYS: We're not talking about the Labour Party, we're talking about.... CLARKE: The commentators at that time thought the recession was over. Now I've been cautious because ever since I've been Chancellor I have said, we have a...still it's a fragile recovery, it's got to get stronger - it has actually been getting stronger whilst I've been Chancellor and my job is to keep the conditions which do get it stronger. HUMPHRYS: But why shouldn't they say, all right we hear you say that, but once bitten twice shy. We heard your Government say it before and unless you're saying - I Kenneth Clarke am quite different to people like Norman Lamont and John Major, listen to me 'Honest Ken' - then why shouldn't they say once bitten twice shy? CLARKE: Because unemployment's down two hundred and twenty thousand over twelve months ago. Let's take something that matters an awful lot to ordinary men and women - there are more new jobs, unemployment has fallen, that is good practical evidence of a reovery that's getting stronger. Inflation, I mention inflation which is important if we keep ourselves competitive, we've got inflation levels which are the lowest we've had for twenty five years. All that, factually, reinforces my judgment which I give to you and other people that this recovery is for real, it's getting stronger, it's going to last. HUMPHRYS: But let me go back to this basic fundamental question of trust. They have heard these sorts of things before and they have been - we - if you like, have been let down before. You seem not to be denying that fact so the question now is why at this stage when you recite these kinds of statistics and interpret them in the way you chose to interpret them that they shouldn't say "but yes, we have heard it before"? CLARKE: Well they've heard honest judgments before and they're hearing honest judgments from me now. What has happened as the recovery has got underway is that it has been uncertain, it has...we were been bouncing along the bottom at one time as the pundits continually said. But if you look back now, you can see that two years ago we did have the beginnings of recovery and it's taken longer to get to come along. It's steadily strenghtened because of our success; getting our inflation down from the heights I mentioned in 1990, getting our interest rates down, getting our public finances sorted out and getting public spending under control. All the things that every other Government in the Western world is going to have to do to get recovery and in the United States and in the United Kingdom you have that recovery which we now need to see in Continental Europe because that's a very important market to us. HUMPHRYS: But you see, the last time you told them what you thought was going to happen - before the election admittedly, what you thought was going to happen with the economy you were mistaken. You thought it was going to happen much more quickly, as you just said, than it actually did. Now they will say you were either mistaken - genuinely mistaken, which means you were incompetent to a certain extent - or you were being mendacious. CLARKE: No we weren't, we were mistaken, we did at the last election believe - as everybody else did - that for example the public spending deficit would go up to..the public deficit would go up to thirty million...billion pounds or thereabouts. If you look back that's what most people thought. It wasn't just the Conservatives, it was the Labour Party, it was the Liberal Party and...and most of the economic forecasters. Everybody was proceeding on the basis that the recovery was underway, that the peak of the PSBR would be thirty billion or thereabouts. You can't find, I don't think, a single reputable economic forecaster who at the time of the election thought we would actually have a borrowing requirement of fifty billion pounds. That developed thereafter. That is why the Government, when that developed, had to take the steps we had to take to get that under control and make sure the recovery still came through. But when you say now "why should they believe my current judgement" what I am saying is a judgement, the best judgement I can make on all the information I have flowing in to me - some of which is of variable reliability, as is the way with economic statistics - but I think it shows now and it's seen and is visible in day to day life that we are seeing things steadily picking up as the recovery gets stronger. HUMPHRYS: All right, you say... CLARKE: We got the time wrong, that's all. It took a little longer because we had underestimated the extent to which what was called the 'debt overhang' made us slower to come out of recession. But that's true across the rest of Western Europe as well. You will find the politicians, economists saying the same, slightly mistaking things in timing about recovery across Western Europe. HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at some ways in which people might now say we are still being misled. Let's look at what you've been saying very recently. You wanted your campaigners, the Tory Party campaigners when they go on the doorstep, to remind people of what you describe as facts. If you are a basic rate taxpayer for instance, you said, there was no change to your tax rate in the budget. Now that's simply not true in reality, is it? At least it's being highly economical with the truth. CLARKE: The marginal rates of taxation which we reduced in the 1980s, I took as a 'given' in the budget. That's why standard rate of income tax is twenty five per cent, kept it there, compared with the thirty three per cent that Labour used to have; the reason being that I think it has an incentive effect that you keep three quarters - put in straightforward terms - of every extra pound that you earn. HUMPHRYS: But when you give me that sort of answer do you think people actually dissect it as carefully as you have just done? When you say something like "if you are a basic..." CLARKE: What you mean is, is what I have said is
totally accurate? HUMPHRYS: No, no. Well, oh yes. As far as it goes... CLARKE: Let's get to the point. You are getting a bit like Harriet Harman, what particular theory are you now about to run to try to show that what I have just said isn't right? HUMPHRYS: Because what you just said wasn't the whole truth, it was part of the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth and what people want when they listen to politicians....National Insurance, National Insurance, it does not include the fact - your statement didn't include the fact that National Insurance has gone up by one per cent. And you know and I know and everybody watching this programme knows that National Insurance is direct taxation by another name. CLARKE: No, with the greatest respect you can't ask me a question about the marginal rate of tax... HUMPHRYS: No, I didn't ask you a question about the marginal rate of taxation at all, you chose to interpret it that way. CLARKE: ...to which you get...you said I haven't put up the rates of taxation. I answered you perfectly accurately on the marginal rates. Norman Lamont put up the National Insurance contribution by one per cent that is true. National Insurance contribution goes to providing the great part of the finance for the Welfare State, the payments for pensions... HUMPHRYS: No it doesn't. It's not a hypothecated tax at all it goes straight into the bin! CLARKE: We have a contributory social security system in this country - most people would support that... HUMPHRYS: In theory, but in reality it doesn't work like that. CLARKE: ...in reality we have very heavy pressures on public expenditure from retirement pensions, from benefits to the disabled, benefits to the unemployed, benefits for the poor. That's why at a time when we were in financial difficulties, Norman announced - it is true - there was a one per cent increase in National Insurance. HUMPHRYS: Are you honestly telling me that people don't regard that as an increase in tax? CLARKE: It is an increase in National Insurance but you were accusing me a moment ago of inaccurately answering your questions about marginal rates of tax and I am explaining why you are wrong to try to say that what...I always give the straightforward answers to the questions. National Insurance is up one per cent but my reply to you about marginal rates of tax was totally accurate. My political opponents... HUMPHRYS: As far as it went. CLARKE: My political opponents would raise the marginal rates of tax, they quite plainly would and did in the past. HUMPHRYS: But I didn't ask you about your political opponents, I asked you about... CLARKE: You asked me what my views on the rates of tax and I defended them because I think the low standard rate is one of the achievements of the Conservative Government and I have no intention of putting the rates of tax back to where they were. HUMPHRYS: But, look, you are an ordinary taxpayer, I'm an ordinary taxpayer. If I am asked for an extra one per cent out of my take-home pay in order to go to National Insurance, that, as far as I am concerned, is an increase in the rate of tax. Now, that is simple common sense, isn't it. CLARKE: I've answered your questions about National Insurance if you ask about National Insurance. National Insurance is going up by one per cent, quite right. HUMPHRYS: Yes indeed, but you didn't acknowledge that fact when you said to your campaign workers, let us remind people of the facts, if you're a basic... CLARKE: I don't mind questions about why we have raised some taxes, the way in which we spread the burden of tax across the population, things I've brought into tax and so on, but it is simply not true that at any stage I have been evasive about that. I will say, I've spent an hour and twenty minutes telling the country why we were raising tax and which taxes we were raising. And we can have a perfectly straightforward debate about that. But if you want to ask me questions about marginal rates of tax I will tell you about marginal rates of tax. HUMPHRYS: No I don't want to ask you questions about marginal rates of tax. CLARKE: National Insurance, I agree we are putting up National Insurance, but the effect of all these things on the average taxpayer has been grossly exaggerated by our critics but it has been clearly explained by us and I refute your suggestion that I have been misleading about it and I also think that the current atmosphere is that people who have been rather frightened by the prospect of the tax changes and that they will find it's nothing like as bad as it's being made out when they come into effect. HUMPHRYS: Well, let's have a look at that. Five pound seventy five is the figure that you have set. CLARKE: That's the average across households, yes. HUMPHRYS: That's the average across households. Right. All households? CLARKE: Yes. HUMPHRYS: Including those households which at the moment pay no tax at all. CLARKE: Well, there aren't many that pay no tax at all. There are quite a lot that don't pay income tax. But VAT is rather a difficult tax for any household to avoid, as are things like taxes on cigarettes, if you smoke, taxes on petrol. That's why when you see these funny figures people play about - and I know my figure's just the best estimate across households but if you start coming to others I will point out what's wrong with all these silly estimates in a moment. But the fact is that you have to try - if you look across all population, everybody's circumstances vary and that therefore affects how much tax they pay - but that's the average across households. HUMPHRYS: Alright. Well, let me ask you another question, then. What is the average for earning households, those taxes for those households who pay normal rates of Income Tax and all the rest of it? CLARKE: Well, they..it all depends what assumptions you make about... HUMPHRYS: Alright, I'll give you an assumption. CLARKE: Well, the assumption is - you see - people talk about the average household. They talk about the typical household. HUMPHRYS: Well, let me give you one, then. CLARKE: Well, it depends whether you smoke heavily. HUMPHRYS: Yeah - I'm sure. CLARKE: It depends whether you use a car a lot. It depends how often you're going to fly in an aeroplane in the course of the
year. It depends how much you actually insure. It depends what mixture of things you buy and that is why even the best estimates are, you know, guess'timates for the individual person. And, then, when you start adding - as people do - assumptions that someone's going to get a massive pay increase, you, then, start getting fairly massive figures... HUMPHRYS: Let's not sort of suck figures out of the air, then. Let's use a figure. One of your own Government figures, taken from the House of Commons Library. I mean, it's a perfectly straightforward figure, here. We're looking, here, at an average family. Alright, you'll say there's no such thing as an average family. But, I'll define it. It's somebody - it's a male wage earner earning... CLARKE: You're plunging into one of Harriet's interminable tables. HUMPHRYS: Well, I'm sorry about that but it's not an interminable table. It's a very, very.. CLARKE: No, no. You cannot get out of this one. HUMPHRYS ...simple straightforward figure - an average householder earning just under twenty thousand pounds a year, with a couple of kids and a mortgage of thirty thousand pounds. Now, that's pretty straightforward, isn't it? Average. We can use-we can apply the word 'average' there. CLARKE: Does he smoke? HUMPHRYS: It's the ideal family. CLARKE: How big is the car? HUMPHRYS: He smokes the average amount, he's got an ordinary car. He doesn't do a huge amount of mileage. And, the figure - the extra tax that the average - that he is going to have to pay is more than ten pounds a week. Now, that's nearly double the figures you've been putting. CLARKE: What assumption are you making for his pay rise in that? You see, all these figures. If you look at those tables
which are quarried by critics, which is fair enough.. HUMPHRYS: It's not quarried by critics, this is out of the House of Commons Library. CLARKE: Yes - with lots of footnotes attached about what assumptions you made about this household. Let me-let's say they've got an average mortgage - you did say that. If they've got an average mortgage. HUMPHRYS: Thirty thousand a year. CLARKE: Thirty thousand a year. Well, their mortgage repayments have gone done by a hundred and sixty pounds a month. HUMPHRYS: We're talking about a tax.... CLARKE: ...one hundred and fifty pounds a month in the last three years. HUMPHRYS: We're talking about a Tax.... CLARKE: I'm talking about how well off they are. I'm talking about consumer confidence. HUMPHRYS: I'm not. I'm not. CLARKE: And whether-whether this taxation... HUMPHRYS: If you want to talk about that - that's fine. CLARKE: ...whether this taxation is actually going to undermine my confidence that that family is going to benefit from the recovery and the Tax contribution - whatever they do make - which will depend on how much petrol or cigarettes and everything else they buy. HUMPHRYS: You can talk about.. CLARKE: ...is going to contribute to making the job more secure, the business more prosperous, general living standards going up which is my main job as Chancellor - rather than this silly game of - as the Tax increases about to be paid. Everyone will know what they're paying in a month or two's time, all these guess'timates about what they might or might not be paying. HUMPHRYS: As you say, as you say people are going to know in a month's or two time when they get their payslip, at the end of their week's or month's work they are going to know and that person I have just described to you, because of what you've said is going to expect it's going to be something like he's going to be something like a fiver a week worse off, he's not, he's going to be a tener a week worse off. CLARKE: No, not on his payslip, that's not..that figure you have got there is certainly not just income tax or national insurance that is the trouble with these figures. We do our best to answer questions when people ask them but as the old saying goes, if people will ask silly questions they sometimes get not very good answers... HUMPHRYS: ....I can't for the life of me think what's silly about a question which says... CLARKE: Because you have to assume no one - you have to be earning far more than that for that to come out of the payslip. What you are trying to estimate is the effect of the other tax increases in the Budget and I spread the tax changes of the Budget across all bands of income, spread it by broadening the tax base to a certain extent, it...so if you think that figure is sort of income tax being paid by that person, it's wrong. HUMPHRYS: But the figure...the description.... CLARKE: ...I'm sorry if this is sounding critical of you, but some of my political opponents - and I'm not going to go on about Harriet Harman anymore but she goes out sort of giving the impression that people are going to pay all this .... HUMPHRYS: She is obviously rattling you a bit, look..... CLARKE: Well she gets from more gullible journalists than yourself, she gets too good a run for her money when she produces these kind of figures. HUMPHRYS: Well let's hope you all get a suitable run for your money. The average impact across all households is an increase of about five pounds seventy five a week, that was what you said right... CLARKE: Yes but... HUMPHRYS: Now what I am trying to demonstrate... CLARKE: It depends on the household, for average peniosners about a pound a week. HUMPHRYS: Yes but you see that's going to lead people to think that when they get their pay packet, by the time they have paid all their bills, including the cigarettes - all the rest of it, they are going to be five pounds seventy five a week worse off but the reality is that the average earning household is going to be more than a tener a week worse off and you know that that is the case. CLARKE: It depends on what they spend their money on I mean, I..my figure, I think as you say I've described quite clearly it's the average across households, I've never told anybody that means that everybody is going to have this reduction. The figure that took headlines spectacularly of twenty two pounds a week that's somebody who's earning about four hundred pounds a week, has a particular correlation of circumstances and has two big pay rises. HUMPHRYS: So it's silly to take this sort of figure..... CLARKE: Then you shouldn't misuse them.. HUMPHRYS: Well alright talking of... CLARKE: Neither of us should misuse them, they are the best estimates of the kind of burden of taxation we're talking about which, of course, all taxation people would rather not pay taxation but it's necessary taxation because if we didn't actually have the combination of spending cuts I've made and some taxation, our present recovery would be ground to a halt. Now it's actually going to strengthen it. HUMPHRYS: The danger is when you produce the kinds of figures you've produced yesterday people are going to say every time they discover that it ain't quite like that, you're going to forfeit a little bit more trust aren't you, that's the problem with those sorts of figures. CLARKE: I think my figures yesterday were good figures, I mean they... unless somebody starts claiming that I'd said to the worldthat everybody will pay five pounds forty five, the ordinary pensioner household ....far less than that. HUMPHRYS: But if that's the right basis on which to calculate those figures, how come when you said Labour's tax bombshell was going to be a thousand a year for every family in that case when you calculated that sum, you took only earning households, you didn't take them across the
board as you did to produce your five pounds figure. CLARKE: What we took was John Smith's Budget, which even though he like ours assumed that the recesssion was coming to an end and the borrowing....... HUMPHRYS: And you spread it across only earning households. CLARKE: He only got thirty five thousand million pounds worth of promises that he's been making.... HUMPHRYS: And you spread it across only earning households when you produced your figure yesterday, you spread it across every single household, including old age pensioners who pay no tax at all and people on unemployment benefit who pay no tax at all. CLARKE: At the time of the election I don't think we'd get half the figures to Labour's budget figures... HUMPHRYS: That's not the quesiton I am asking you. CLARKE: ...they have done to ours since. That the underlying truth at the last election and it remains an underlying truth now, is the Labour Party was then committed to spending huge amounts of extra money. HUMPHRYS: That's isn't the point.. CLARKE: It's certainly the point, it means that tax inevitably would have been higher if we'd then had a Labour Government, it means if the Labour Government had still been sticking Labour
Party..had still been sticking now to those promises to spend thirty-five billion pounds, we'd be having a huge increase in taxation now. HUMPHRYS: My question was a quite simple one. Why choose a certain set of circumstances? CLARKE: .... handed over to Gordon Brown. HUMPHRYS: My question was a simple one. Why choose a certain set of circumstances to illustrate a Labour Tax figure and a completely different one to illustrate a Government tax figure? And, the reason I ask the question is that when people see the reality of what's going to happen to their take home pay and their family expenditure in a couple of months' time, perhaps, they're going to say: we were right not to trust him.
We shouldn't have trusted him the last time, we're not going to trust him in future. CLARKE: I will stand by that test. I, actually, think we've now got a situation in this country where some people - some people - have been given a quite exaggerated impression of the impact of taxation upon them - two months' time, as I say. We will find out. And, then, in two months' time, you'll find people are not very interested in all this maze of figures which through the middle of which I have given my figure, the average across households, for the necessary taxation that is going to be one of the things underlying our recovery. HUMPHRYS: Chancellor, thank you very much. ...oooOOOooo...