BRITAIN’S SOURCES OF COMMODITIES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 15

BRITAIN’S SOURCES OF COMMODITIES

♦ LEGISLATION TO MEET EMERGENCY NEEDS (BRITISH OTITCUX WIBELBaa.) RUGBY, June 2. To-day’- business in the House of Commons was the Essential Commodities Reserves Bill, conferring important new powers on the Board of Trade, and giving retrospective authority for the purchases already made by the Government of wheat and whale oil for storage against a rational emergency. In moving the second reading the President of the Board of Trade (Mr Oliver Stanley) said there was no dispute about the desirability of the Government being in a positiqn to accumulate stocks of essential commodities for use in a possible emergency. The service departments were already entitled to bear upon their votes the accumulation of reserves of petroleum or other minerals for the use of the services, and the bill gave similar privileges to the Board of Trade in respect of commodities for the civil population. Food storage was essentially a defence question, and as such must in principle fall within the functions of the Minister for the’ Co-ordina-tion of Defence (Sir Thomas Inskip). But the Board, of Trade was obviously more closely in touch with commercial interests and more conV""sant with the commercial methods which would have to be used in the execution of the policy when it had been once decided. The schedule of 4he bill provided that commodities which might be declared essential were limited to foodstuffs, forage for animals, fertilisers, and petroleum. Further legislation would be necessary to add to the list. The reason why the Government had decided to confine the bill to the typq of commodities which were absolutely certain to be required in an emergency was that it was desired to minimise the disturbance which the taking of these unusual important powers might have upon normal business. ® Mr Stanley gave the House some details of the transactions, already, carried out. 'He added that no further purchases of any of the three commodities was at present contemplated. The. aim of the food storage policy was precautionary, not preventive, and the proposals in the bill must be viewed in that perspective. It was impossible to make the country independent of outside supplies except for a short period, and the first line of defence against a shortage was to ensure the continued command of the sea. The bill passed its second reading without a division.