EMPIRE SETTLEMENT.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17460, 22 May 1922, Page 5

EMPIRE SETTLEMENT.

CO-ORDINATION OF IDEAS. (from our own correspondent.) LONDON, April 5. A- meeting of the Empire Development Committee of the House of Commons, held last evening, with Mr A. Bigland in the chair, was addressed by Sir J. Mitchell (West Australia) and the Hon. J. McWhae (Victoria) each of whom dealt at length with migration and settlement schemes in connexion with their respective States. The principal purpose of the meeting was to consider how best to promote Empire development overseas, and at the same time relieve the financial pressure upon the British taxpayer. It was represented that money spent in promoting migration and land settlement in the overseas Dominions would not only relieve the British taxpayer of financial responsibility for men and women who might otherwise become a charge upon tne community during periods of unemployment, but woula create oversea markets for British goods. In this connexion, the proposed British Emigration- Bill, promised in the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament, became the subject of consideration. Both the Australian speakers favoured the closest co-opera-tion between the Imperial and Dominion Governments .in providing funds and facilities for transport overseas and land' settlement in the Dominions. It is understood that the Government's "emigration schemes," which Sir A. Mond hopes may help to some extent to solve the housing question, will resolve themselves into an extension of the work of the Overseas Settlement Department of the Colonial Office to all classes of British subjects. Up to the present the .Department has confined its activities to settling exService men in the Dominions, and by the end of this year it is estimated that 100,000 ex-Service men, and their wives and families, will have been asr sisted across the seas and settled on the land in one. or other oversea Dominions. The development will simply carry out the agreement of last year's Imperial Conference, at which were decided, the general lines on which such