BRITAIN’S BUDGET.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 May 1922, Page 5

BRITAIN’S BUDGET.

DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. CRITICISM OF MEMBERS. BURDEN FROM WAR. By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Received May 3, 5.5 p.m. London, May 2. The debate on the Budget was resumed in the House of Commons to-day. Sir Donald McLean (deputy-leader of the Liberal Party) attacked the Ministry’s past haphazard imposition of meat taxation. The Budget would have been ruined without the receipt of Germany’s contribution for the maintenance of the army of occupation. He condemned the discontinuance of the repayment of debt as disastrous and likely to affect our favorable foreign exchange position. Mr. Bonar Law approved the Budget as the best that could be expected, though he believed every available penny should go to the repayment of debts when trade was good and revenues expanding. He believed bad trade justified and demanded reducing the scale of repayments. Whatever any Government might have done he believed the crash had to come, but Mr. Bonar Law said he was surprised the boom had not been short-lived. If the income tax reduction only gave a slight impulse to trade it would help the country more than continuing debt reduction on a prodigious scale. Britain, he added, must bear a huge financial burden for at least two generations and the only way to meet the position was by a reduction of expenditure. So far as human foresight could tell another world war was unlikely, at least for a century, but if it came before that Britain’s real strength must consist of a strong financial position. Mr. J. H. Thomas (Labor) said Labor objected to the Government giving a bonus to farmers and landlords, which would have the effect of preventing land being cultivated, and then consoling the masses with a miserable fourpence off tea.