TORY RULE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 26, 1 February 1932, Page 8

TORY RULE?

BRITISH GOVERNMENT. Baldwin Claims Present Policy As Conservative. CABINET APPROVES TARIFF. (United P.A.—lvlectri<: Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON", January 31. In Mr. Mac Donald's absence, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Lord President of the Council, presided at a meeting of the Cabinet. The general terms of the Tariff Bill were approved. Viscount Snowden was absent. Sir Herbert Samuel, Home Secretary, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Scotland, and Sir Donald Maclean, President of the Board of Education, were present, but they did not take part in the discussion. The Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in a speech in his constituency referred to the Cabinet, and declared that the world was still creaking and cracking with problems that produced a position which transcended party interests.

"Differ as we may," he said, "the Cabinet to-day is more determined than ever to face national problems as a united body." Replying to the criticism that the Government does not possess a reparations policy, he declared that the Government had stuck to its policy right through, and it was going to stick to it until error was wiped off the history of Europe. Britain's policy was to return to economic sanity. He emphasised that the repayment by the Bank of England of £30,000,000 on January 25 was a great triumph. The conditions of sterling showed that the world believed in Britain's honesty. Tariffs, said the Prime Minister, must not raise the cost of living or create tariff Avails. On the contrary, we must bring the walls down. Moreover, tariifa must not increase the cost of production, thus hampering exports, or induce inefficiency. Mr. Baldwin, addressing the Empire Industries Association, said, regarding fiscal policy, that there had been delay owing to the necessity for permitting the investigation agreed upon when the Liberals joined the National Government. They were now at a point a Conservative Government would have leached three months earlier. Otherwise, the Government was proceeding precisely along the lines that would have been adopted by a Conservative Government.