BRITISH SURPLUS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1476, 26 June 1912, Page 5

BRITISH SURPLUS.

DISPOSAL OF £6,500,000,

BIG SUM IN REDUCTION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. EXTRA MILLION FOR NAVY. Dγ Telegraph-Press Association-Copyricht (Ree. June 25, 10.35 p.m.) London, June 25. The Chancellor of tin Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd-George, speaking in the House- oi Commons on the questiou of the disposal of tho surplus (.£0,515,000), announced that ,£1,000,000 would be devoted to the Supplementary Estimates for the Navy; .6500,000 to tho development of Uganda and British East Africa, and £5,000,000 to tho reduction of the National Debt. Mr. Lloyd-George said that without anticipating Mr. Churchill's statement regarding the surplus, he might say that tho additional sum Mr. Churchill would ask for tho Navy would not exceed £1,000,000, but further heavy payments would fall duo in subsequent years as a result of the programme Mr. Churchill would find it necessary to outline. - . Tho Colonial Office was pressing for railway extension and increased wharfage facilities in Uganda to meet the yearly increasing productiveness of that country, especially in cotton and wheat. The injurious effects on the cotton industry of America's shortage emphasised the danger of relying on any particular source for supplies. It was anticipated that 105,000 hundredweight of Uganda cotton would be available in 1912. He proposed to advance half a million to Uganda at a rate of interest. The Government had paid oft ,£7?,000,000 of the National Debt, and it was therefore obvious that there was no insufficient repayment to account for the decline in Consols.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain, a former Unionist Chancellor o£ the Exchequer, said he approved of tho disposal of the surplus. .Few Chancellors had been nble to re-acquire Consols for so small art expenditure. A variety of causes had led to their low price. The credit of tho country was bound to suffer while th» Government piled up liabilities for the future. The Prime Jlinister. Mr. Asquith, declared that social reform and tho Navy involved demands which no Government could resist. Yet theso had been accompanied pari passu by ar. unprecedented payment of the debt. Trade was prosperous, and thnra was nothing to cause the least disquiet.

It is expected that Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, will malco n snpplementary naval statement in affortnight.