House of Commons retains right to levy taxation in Ireland after Home Rule

Published: 21 May 1914

The British government will retain the right to levy additional taxation in Ireland after the introduction of Home Rule, the cabinet minister Herbert Samuel has told the House of Commons in London.

Mr. Samuel was speaking as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, informed parliament that Ireland receives a subvention of about £2m per year over and above the taxes collected on the island.

The Chancellor continued by saying that this is a dramatic change from the position of five years ago when Ireland was contributing out of her own revenue £1.8m for Imperial purposes.

Mr. Lloyd George made the statements in the course of a debate about the financial aspects of Home Rule for Ireland. He noted that he had been held up to obloquy in Ireland as the cruelest and meanest Chancellor of the Exchequer, but that entirely the opposite was the case.

The announcement was immediately criticised by Conservative members of parliament.

Sir Banbury asked what British taxpayers would say when they realised that, after Home Rule, no tax raised in Ireland was going to be available for Imperial purposes. Worse than that, he said, a sum of £367,000 a year was going to be transferred from the pockets of English taxpayers to the Irish taxpayers.

He concluded by saying that the English taxpayer would now be paying for the privilege of losing all control over Ireland and there was no guarantee that the amount to be paid would not increase in the future.

The Nationalist MP, Maurice Healy, agreed with Sir Banbury in his distrust of the figures provided by the government, but said that while it was indeed the case that the budget was a delusion and a fiction, it was so because the new Irish government would not have even a penny extra to use for its own purposes.

In the course of his contribution to the debate, Herbert Samuel said that it was always intended that any fresh revenue derived from the normal growth of Ireland in population or in prosperity should go to the British Exchequer. This, he said, should gradually go to meet the deficit which exists prior to Home Rule, and which will still exist after Home Rule until the day the two sides come into balance.

Mr. Samuel said that it was never intended that the Imperial Parliament should levy additional taxes on Ireland for a purely British purpose but that the Imperial Parliament must maintain the power of increasing taxation on Ireland for Imperial purpose, since that Parliament must be supreme.