There are distractions this morning. I am offshore for a few days.
That's Bryher, in the Isles of Scilly. For the record, they opted into UK income tax in the '50s. They got the NHS in exchange.
And they're beautiful.
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Enjoy your break, Richard. Looking forward to your detailed comments on this when you get home……Of course Austerity works, it just takes 50 years!
http://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-17/austerity-measures-must-continue-for-50-years-to-rescue-uk-finances/
I will take a look
I hope you have a good break. Looks idyllic, but of course everything that can’t be caught, grown or made there has to be expensively imported (and similarly everything not consumed locally, and all the waste, has to be exported).
What leads you to think that the islanders “opted into” income tax in 1953? Was there a referendum, or some other sort of vote? From what I can see, the government simply decided it was time to change the law, and that was that.
For the record, income tax was imposed in the Isles of Scilly by s.29 of the Finance Act 1953. It was of course a Conservative government: RA Butler was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It is clear from the debate in the House of Commons – https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1953/jun/17/clause-27-assessments-etc-in-isles-of – that Scillonians did have access to the National Health Service before 1953, with discussion of the cost and inconvenience of getting to hospitals on the mainland if that was necessary, and comparisons with the similar position in Shetland and Orkney. It seems that few of the 1,800 or so residents would have been earning enough be liable to pay much income tax in any event. Apparently the local MP, Greville Howard, a Conservative, and the local residents were not consulted in advance. He thought he would be serving his constituents best by opposing the proposal. For Labour, Harold Wilson seems to think it was inevitable.
Howard came back the next year to ask the government to deal with transitional issues. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1954/jun/29/new-clause-relief-from-first-assessments
The population of the Isles was down to about 1,800 in 1953, but it had been a little higher, around 2,000, several years before, and it is somewhat more again now, about 2,300. Like Cornwall, typical earnings are still significantly below the national average.
In another anomaly, Scillonians did not have to pay VED – it seems largely on the basis that public money was not spent on the roads there – until 1971.
Peculiarly, the Island of Lundy was also not subject to income tax, but only 20 people lived there, and “it has been decided that it is impossible to levy tax on so small a community”(!). There are still a few permanent residents, but I doubt they escape taxes today. I wonder when that anomaly was addressed.
Answering my own question, it seems that UK income tax came to Lundy in 1973 (or possibly 1974) but I can’t see anything specific in the Finance Acts.
I always understood there was consultation
I read a lot of Scillonian history at one time and that was the impression I obtained
You are ahead of me on reading much Scillonian history! From the Hansard report, it seems there was no consultation before the tax policy change was announced. But perhaps there was afterwards.
Was that reading also the source for the contention that there were no NHS services in the Scillies before 1953?
There was no hospital
Well, the Hansard report mentions islanders visiting the local hospital, and then having to bear the considerable costs of travel and accommodation when referred for treatment in Redruth.
According to Crispin Gill’s book on the Isles, there was an emergency hospital in St Marys since 1938. No doubt it and the local doctor and their staff came into the NHS from 1948. Perhaps you are thinking of the clinics that Gill mentions were opened on St Martins and St Agnes in 1953?
The contemporaneous press coverage says nothing about any prior consultation or “opting in”. Quite the reverse: the islanders (and their MP) were surprised by the announcement, and they sent a deputation to make representations opposing the change after it was announced.
The anomaly was more limited than I expected: it was only income arising in the island that was not taxed, mainly due to an oversight in creating the administrative machinery to collect it, dating back to 1798. Income paid to islanders residents from the mainland and other sources was taxed.
I am learning from you!
The Scillies are rightly labelled as Britain’s South Sea Islands. Stunning in the sunshine! But beware rising sea levels…
Enjoy the rest of your holiday – all of you!
Given the circumstances I wouldn’t blame you for not coming back to deal old Blighty.
Technically it is in Blighty
It does not feel like it