ROAD FUND “RAIDED”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 298, 8 March 1928, Page 11

ROAD FUND “RAIDED”

£26,000,000 SPENT IN TWO YEARS CHURCHILL CRITICISED By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. LONDON, Tuesday. In the House of Lords to-day Earl Beauchamp submitted a motion protesting against the raiding of the Road Fund by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill, to the extent of £26,400,000 in two years. This, he said, had resulted in the postponement or cancellation of road improvement works throughout the country. The motor vehicles licensed in Britain totalled 1,729,000, which was equal to one to every 26 people, compared with one per six in the United States, and one per 11 in Canada. Mr. Churchill’s raids had damped down municipal road schemes and checked the expenditure of at least £13,000,000 in wages alone for road work. The First Commissioner of Works, Viscount Peel, in replying, objected to the term “raid,” which, he said, suggested something iniquitous. A pledge could never be given that the proceeds from a particular tax would permanently be devoted to a particular purpose. Without the Road Fund money Mr. Churchill would have been forced, in 1926, to increase the income tax by 3d just when trade was staggering from the results of the general strike. That would have been more damaging from the point of view of unemployment than the course adopted. Road improvement works had not been stopped. On the contrary the expenditure on that work was increasing at a rate of more than £1,000,000 a year. Britain’s roads were probably the best in the world. Earl Beauchamp withdrew his motion.- —A. and N.Z.-Sun.