BUDGET DEBATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1942, Page 4

BUDGET DEBATE

IN HOUSE OF COMMONS VIEWS FOR AND AGAINST. QUESTIONS OF TAXATION & ECONOMY. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, April 15. Unnecessary expenditure probably totalled £2,000,000 daily, while increases in taxation could have been avoided had reasonable economy been enforced in all Departments, said Mr Joseph Braithwaite (Con.), in the course of the Budget Debate in the House of Commons. “We art not getting efficiency for the taxpayers money,” he added. “We are getting a multiplicity of officials who legard themselves as masters rather than servants of the public. Many are not competent to conduct the vast machinery of this war. The result is that initiative and incentive are being buried under mountains of paper.” Mr C. Stephen (Lab.), said: “This is a rich man’s Budget, which will cause ihe utmost disappointment throughout ihe country. The rich are getting richer. Sir Kingsley Wood has handed the medicine to the workers and cynically said the rich cannot pay more. There should be more equality of sacrifice.”_ Mr A. Woodburn (Lab.), said: “It is no humdrum Budget, but a battledrum Budget. It marshals the country financially for the whole purpose of the war and has been accepted in that spirit, as a businesslike method of financing it.”