Post Office Savings Bank Accounts

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22424, 10 June 1938, Page 12

Post Office Savings Bank Accounts

But for one fact, it would be unnecessary to say anything about the dispute between the Prime Minister and the Leader of,•the Opposition over the Post Office Savings Bank accounts—a dispute in which the Postmaster-General has been summoned to the Prime Minister’s aid. The one fact is that neither Mr Savage nor his aide, Mr Jones, who has come loyally lumbering up, seems disposed to do the simple thing that was necessary: that is, admit that Mr Hamilton was injured by a crudely inaccurate statement and that the inaccuracy was a culpable one! Broadcasting to the whole Dominion in April, Mr Savage claimed for his Government the credit great increase in the number of depositors and the amount of deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank. “ What was the position,” he asked, “ when “Mr Hamilton was Postmaster-General? In “the first two years of the Coalition Govern - “ment depositors . . . dropped by 81,000.” When Mr Hamilton spoke in May, he showed that the law had been amended to transfer a great number of “ dead ” accounts to the Consolidated Fund. As -he said, the Year-Book, of v hich the latest issue was available to the Prime Minister when he spoke in April, explicitly mentions that this amendment “ was “ responsible for the decrease of 80,000 which “occurred in 1932-33 in the number of open “ accounts.” Mr Savage was wrong. His error was one that threatened to damage Mr Hamilton. His proper course was to acknowledge the error and to undo the damage. He was not so candid. In a statement reported yesterday—a month after Mr Hamilton’s protest—he admitted that He had been “ misinformed ” but pleaded that the figures “ given ” to -him were “ capable of conveying the wrong impression”; and he then left it to the Postmaster-General ,to make a “complete statement,” so that everybody might know “ the real position.” Mr Joneses statement is very long and goes well beyond the point. It goes so far as to suggest that the Official Year-Book, which is compiled by official statisticians from official figures, was used to “hide the true position’’: a suggestion which does Mr Jones rio credit and affords him and Mr Savage no help. Its only basis is the fact that the number of transferred accounts was about .67,500, not 80,000; but this does not alter the fact that the transfer accounted for the large drop in the account totals, as the Year-Book says, or the fact that Mr Savage was widely wrong and was relying upon his wide error to damage the Leader Of the Opposition. There are times when a plain withdrawal is! obligatory upon* fair men and a word of regret is/not wasted. vMr Savage and Mr Jones are not likely to be "blamed for extravagance in this matter