BURDENS OF DEFENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1939, Page 5

BURDENS OF DEFENCE

DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS POLICY OF THE LABOUR PARTY. CHANCELLOR ON FINANCIAL MEASURES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGHY, March G. In the debate on the Defence Loans Bill, which passed through its final stages in the House of Commons, Mr F. W. Pethick-Lawrence (Labour), for the Opposition, said: “Despite our opposh tion to much of the Government’s policy, out of which in our opinion the need for this Bill arises, we find ourselves driven into the position of not opposing the Bill. The Bill does not arise because the Government’s foreign policy has been successful, but because it has been a failure, and the fact that we are taking this course does not mean that we abate in any respect our hostility to a great deal of the Government’s action abroad, nor does it commit us to aquiescing in any way to the allocation which the Chancellor decides to make between taxing and borrowing.” Mr Pethick-Lawrence went on to urge upon the Government the necessity for marrying the plan for economic recovery to the plan for monetary expansion inherent in the measures before the House.

Mr Wilfred Roberts, for the Liberals, urgued the urgency, if the country were to hold its own in the armaments race, of mobilising for industry, by proper economic planning, the wasted man-power of the unemployed. Mr Henderson Stewart (Liberal National) claimed that the debate showed the unanimity of the House on defence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, replying for the Government, emphasised that the Government had never conceived that in the rearmament programme of £1,500,000,000 eleven-fifteenths was to be regarded as the annual charge and four-fifteenths as the capital charge. There was never an idea of a conscious attempt to apportion the total between capital and non-capital expenditure in those proportions. On the contrary, they were throwing a very considerable part of the capital expenditure upon revenue. They were justified in getting a very substantial amount by way of loan. They were actually raising for defence out of revenue twice as much as in 1934. He was satisfied that the indications were favourable, and the besl opinion was that the country could shoulder this burden.