RATE RELIEF SCHEME

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 375, 8 June 1928, Page 9

RATE RELIEF SCHEME

MR. SNOWDEN’S OBJECTION UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) LONDON, Wednesday. In the House of Commons to-day the Minister of Health, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, moved the second reading of the Rating Valuation apportionment Bill. He explained that it dealt with the machinery of the rate relief scheme, outlined in the Budget. Mr. Philip Snowden, Labour member for Colne Valley, Yorkshire, moved an amendment objecting to unfair discrimination between enterprises and localities preliminary to subsidising certain industries at the expense of the householders, shopkeepers, and distributors. He said that, taking industry as a whole, the proposed rating relief would average 1£ per cent, of the value of the total ouput. That would do little to lessen unemployment or to stimulate industry. The Government’s rate relief scheme was purely and simply a system of subsidirs be given, irrespective of needs. The brewers, whose profits had increased by 150 per cent, since 1920, would be relieved to the same exte:ft as shipbuilders. Sir H. Kingsley Wood, Parliamentary Secretary to the Health Department, in replying to the debate, said the representatives of necessitous areas would have no cause to complain when the Government’s proposals for the reform of the local government system Were considered in the autumn.