BRITAIN’S FINANCE AND INDUSTRY

Grey River Argus, 15 April 1948, Page 6

BRITAIN’S FINANCE AND INDUSTRY

LODON, April 13. The Economist says:—The Cripps’ budget, is in the main a sound, competent and courageous performance, with limits set by the major absurdity of taxing the average family 12s to 14s in order to give the same sum back in food subsidies. The changes in taxation were with one large exception, soundly conceived. That exception is the investment levy, one more blow at voluntary private savings. The large private investor must have a verv stout heart if Im does not now abandon the struggle, put all his money in a safe bank and draw on it for his needs. While his disappearance may or may not be an edifying spectacle. It will certainly be bad for the tax collector, who will have to find his revenue from slender*? purses. No sort of case can be made out for this special contribution, unless it can be believed to be a once-and-for-all expedient, but surely it is childish to suppose that it will be non-recurring. The Economist lays the blame on the trades unions, who had “made it clear that one of their conditions for reluctant agreement to a policy of wage stabilisation was that something should be done to capital, and this was probably the only thing that, could be done that would be sufficiently spectacular without breaking the back of Inland Revenue.” When a veto on any interference with (food) subsidies is folloved by an insistence on a capital levy of a harmful type, the combination makes a distasteful picture. The Budget generally does the right thing for the moment —except for this blot—but it makes little contribution towards the long-term problems of Government finance. Government expenditure, i stuggests must be reduced. It welcomes the innovation oi distinguishing between tbe formal surnlus shown in the orthodox Exchequer returns and the “true” surplus of receipts over expenditure (the convenlional surplus in this case being £778,000,000, and the prospective real surplus £319,000,000). The claim that there is a new spirit abroad in British industry is supported by impressions gathered during a three days’ tour of engineering plants centred *on Birmingham and at Corby, in Northamptonshire, by most of 43 representatives of the foreign and British Commonwealth press who took part in the tour. They visited four of Britain’s largest industrial undertaking, selected not because of their size but because they could be regarded as representing a reasonable average standard. One is among the world’s largest manufacturers of scale and weighing equipment; another is the largest factory operated by one of Britain’s biggest makers of electrical equipment; the third was one of the largest and most specialised tube factories; and the fourth was a self-contained plant mining, smelting, and processing its own iron ore all on the same site. Together these four plants employ 21,400 people. It was stated that if sufficient supplies of scrap were available the Government steel target oi. 14,000,000 tons for the present year will be exceeded, possibly by 1,000,000 tons. It is at present running at the rate of over 15,000,000 tons a year, but supplies of scrap are dangerously low, unless more can be obtained from Germany the production level may fall off. Coal presents no difficulties. Development plans will be proceeding with whether the industry becomes State-owned or not. One firm is producing 2,000,000 tons of iron ore a year, or slightly more than one-sixth of the total iron ore production of Britain. It _ has extensive plans for increasing its smelting plant, and has placed an order for the largest opencast iron ore excavator in the world. . . Workers said their conditions and wages were already good, and thev did not think they would be changed either for better,, or worse by nationi a and the advocates

of nationalisation among the worksers seemed fairly evenly divided. Its opponents said that State ownership would mean “too many bosses,” and its advicates argued that it would strengthen Labour’s general position. There is a labour shortage of 65,000 men and women workers in the engineering trades of the Midlands. The greatest need is for unskilled men workers. There is also a big shortage of women. The chief cause is housing shortage. The undertakings inspected use piece-work and other incentive schemes to stimulate production, and these are effective. In the steel mills, where a bonus rate is paid for production above a certain fixed tonnage, some skilled operatives are earning £2O a week, and in the rolling mills ud to £l3 a week. Women are making between £6 and £7 a week for operating automatic machines.