PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 199
a very important power. It is really the one and only power which Parliament possesses to control the Government and to order the Government; and if Parliament were to give its permanent power of raising revenue to the Executive, the Executive would not care two hoots for Parliament. It is, therefore, very desirable that Parliament should keep within its own hands this power. The British Parliament keeps the Executive under control, if I have understood it correctly, in two ways. They have certain important Acts which are only Annual Acts, for which they never have permanent Acts. For instance the Army Act in England is an Annual Act. Every year, the Executive has to come before Parliament in order to get that Act renewed; and if they do not renew it, the whole army will have to be disbanded, because there will be no law governing it. The other measure by which the British Parliament controls the Executive is by reserving for annual levy, certain taxes, for instance, income-tax which forms a very large part of the resources of the British Government, and also of our Government. Therefore, there can be no quarrel on the question that Parliament should be very chary, very tardy, of handing over powers of taxation to the executive. It is perfectly open to Mr. Tyagi to say that in this matter delegation should not be made, or some other view may be taken. But so far as competency is concerned, I am afraid, he is out of court. After this matter was brought to our notice, I also came to the conclusion that, probably, from the point of view of financial propriety, from the point of view of maintaining the supremacy of Parliament, it was desirable to make some amendments in the clauses as they stood in the original Bill. I do not know whether I have got the thing with me now; but I am satisfied that there are two new provisions in the new amendments. One is this that the power to levy customs duty on articles not specified is only for a short period, up to the Budget Session, not indefinitely, for all times. Whenever the Budget Session comes, any customs duty levied by the Executive under this Bill will automatically lapse, and the matter will then be dealt with by Parliament, as Parliament deals with any other financial measure. I should have thought that that was a great improvement in