Stabilising Living Costs

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31113, 16 July 1966, Page 15

Stabilising Living Costs

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, July 15. The House of Commons last night endorsed the Government’s plan to stabilise the cost of living by demanding advance notice of proposals for price and pay increases.

By 340 votes to 236, it rejected an Opposition motion which urged rejection of the bill's advance notice proposals and also a three months’ cool-ing-off period while claims are considered by an independent board. A breach of the “freeze" will be penalised by heavy fines.

The Commons went on to give the bill a second reading—agreement in principle—without a further vote. The Left wing trade union leader, Mr Frank Cousins, who recently resigned from the Cabinet post of Minister of Technology, led a group of

about 50 Labour critics of the bill. But he said he would not vote for the Opposition motion “because it was the Conservatives who created the problem.” Mr Cousins told a packed House that he was convinced the Government was wrong to compel trade unions to give advance notice of wage claims Such notice—which also will apply to proposed price increases—is part of Government plans to stabilise living costs and get the nation out of its economic difficulties. He said he was not against an incomes policy, but objected to compulsion—people being liable to fines of up to £5OO for breaking a threemonths' “freeze” while the case was being considered by a permanent incomes and prices board. The Government’s main aim was to restrain wages, he asserted, but the real answer was modernisation and increased productivity. Mr Cousins found an ally in Mr Reginald Maudling, Deputy

Leader of the Opposition, who said he also favoured an incomes policy. But the idea of compulsion could lead to a complete Socialist State, he warned. The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr George Brown, who asked for agreement in principle to the bill, said it was the key to the Government’s economic policy. The alternative was two million unemployed.