THE BRITISH BUDGET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 304, 18 May 1911, Page 5

THE BRITISH BUDGET.

A SPLENDID SURPLUS.

By Cable—Press Association—Cooyrighl. London, May ID..

In the Budget statement in the House of Commons, Mr. Lloyd-George announced that the past two years had realised a surplus of £5,608,000. Everything except sugar and tea had exceeded the estimates.

Members of the House of Commons would receive £4OO yearly, thus costing (£230,000 annually, but no travelling expenses would be allowed. The cost of the Coronation would be '£300,000.

Old-age pensions would cost £12,500,DOO, this being an increase of £2,250,000. The whole cost of pensions would be borne by the State, thus releasing the guardians. The only alterations proposed for the relief of taxation were that tlie cocoa duties would be reduced by graduating the chocolate duty, and abolishing the drawback, which would cost £45,000 yearly. The liquor duties would be reduced at a cost of £50,000. This would leave a surplus of £337,000, after devoting £2,300,000 to the'old Sinking fund, £1,500,000 to the Development Act, and sanatoria £1,500,000. Mr. Lloyd-George said that in three years he had reduced capital liabilities by £28,700,000. INCREASE IX NAVAL VOTE. SUBSTANTIAL REDUCTION NEXT YEAR IF PEACE TALK MATERIALISES. Received 17, 10.55 p.m. London, May 17. Mr. Lloyd-George estimated the income for the current year would be £181,716,000, with a surplus of £432,000. There was an increase in naval expenditure of four millions, totalling £44,393,000. This was unexpected, but he anticipated a substantial reduction in 1912 and a still further reduction in 1913, if half the rhetoric that had recently been spent in the peace campaign were genuine, as he believed. There would be an enormous reduction in armaments. As an immediate effect, Britain would be able to spend more on education, housing, in the reduction of rates and the organising of rural life and industry. The contingent Dreadnoughts would not be a charge on the next Budget. Also, there would be a fall in the statutory provision for German shipbuilding. This involved a ne- \ cessary reduction in British naval armaments, unless a new menace interposed. The Army expenditure was £28,000,000; civil expenditure, including education, £34,500,000; Uganda loan, £250,000. He intended to reduce the national debt by £12,500,000. During Mr. Asquith's Chancellorship, the debt had been reduced by £42.250,000, and during Mr. Lloyd-George's, notwithstanding the naval increase of 37% per cent, and oldage pensions absorbing £13,000,000, the

debt had been reduced by £28.700,00(1, the whole representing a saving in interest of £2,000,000 annually. Trade

was increasing by leaps and bounds. Foreign trade bad increased in three years by £215,000,000. The unemployment percentage in April, 1000, was 8.2; to-day Jt was 2.8.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain opposed the payment of members, and said that if this were to be done, whv should not county councillors and other local representatives be paid