I should like to pass to a few statistical particulars and give the Committee some Budget figures, starting with such forecasts as we can make of the out-turn of the current year, 1945–46. My predecessor's Estimate last April put the total revenue for the year at £3,265,000,000 and expenditure at £5,565,000,000, leaving a deficit, to be covered by borrowing, of £2,300,000,000. The expenditure total included £4,500,000,000 for Votes of Credit, that figure, as my predecessor explained, being, in view of the uncertainties of the situation, a very round and approximate sum. So far as can be foreseen at present, the yield of the various items of revenue will conform roughly to the Estimates. The estimating was well done, as it generally is, by the experts of the Inland Revenue and the Customs. They did their sums and made their imaginative hypotheses very efficiently, and it appears that the yield will conform roughly to the Estimates.
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