TO BE ABOLISHED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 59, 19 December 1945, Page 4

TO BE ABOLISHED

TWO WAR-TIME CONTROLS

MANUFACTURERS PLEASED (N.Z, Press Association-—Copyright.) (Rec. 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. IS. Two important wartime controls will be abolished in Britain at the end of the year. In future motor-cars may be bought without a licence, and anybody will again be able to open a retail shop without a licence. Newspapers, however, are to continue to remain their present wartime Size. '

Mr F. R. C. Rootes (president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, and deputy-chairman of the Rootes Group) said: “It means that distribution will soon be functioning more normally.” 1 Mr H. Seaward, managing-director of Morris Motors, said that the main benefit would be that it would enable production-planners to get to work. “We have never been able to discover exactly what demand for cars exists in Britain to-day. We shall now be able to plan ahead.” 'rhe decision to allow anyone to open , a retail shop without a licence was announced by Sir Stafford Cripps, who said the Government was ending the location of Retail Businesses Order and was closing the register of withdrawn traders. He added that the order had been kept on to help extraders as a class, particularly war disabled, though not ex-servicemen as such.” There are now many exservicemen whose interests we all desire to regard, who have been prevented from trading because they are neither ex-traders nor war disabled. Extraders had had six months to take up their former businesses, and ex-ser-vicemen must now be allowed to enter the field.”

The campaign by members of the House of Commons and others to secure increased newsprint to enable the newspapers to be enlarged continues to meet with no success. The shortage of advertising space in the newspapers is not, according to Sir Stafford Cripps, acting as a deterrent to the reconversion of the industry. He denied the suggestion by Commander JoynsonHicks, who asked in the House of Commons whether he could consider releasing some available reserves of newsprint to facilitate the exchange of labour and commodities. Commander Johnson-Hicks also asked whether Sir Stafford was aware that, by resuming pre-war imports of newsprint from counties outside the dollar area Britain would increase the amount available for consumption by one-third, and why he did not accept this course.

“It is not possible, in view of the present position of foreign exchange, to import newsprint from those countries where it is available,” was the reply.