FOOD SUPPLIES IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23052, 21 June 1940, Page 9

FOOD SUPPLIES IN BRITAIN

FREE MILK TO ' POOR FAMILIES AMPLE STOCKS SAID TO BE ASSURED (Received June 20, 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, June 20. The Ministry of Food announced a national milk scheme as an urgent war-time measure, under which a pint will be supplied free daily to families if the joint weekly income of the parents is below £2 or if the income of a single person is below 27s 6d. Twopence a pint will be charged for expectant mothers and children under five who are not attending school. In the House of Lords, the Minister for Food (Lord Woolton) said even if nothing more came into Britain there were sufficient food supplies for weeks and weeks. “All essential things are there,” he said, “and it is our constant care that these stocks should be kept as high as possible. “We have put up and down the country iron rations of food to be used only in great emergency. In. addition, we have prepared in all areas, round about vulnerable centres of population, other rations which will be used in the event of mass evacuation.” Because of Government subsidies, the price of milk, bread, meat, and bacon had only risen 8 per cent. Without the subsidy it would have been 30 per cent. Uncontrolled foods had risen by 40 per cent. Lord Woolton said he had been trying to use the £60,000,000 a year which the Treasury was spending in subsidising foods so that it should go to the people who most needed it. Food manufacturers had decided in large numbers that they would be prepared to produce goods without profit for some portion of their productions if these could be distributed to poorer sections of the population without undue extra charges. “I am trying.” he said, “to secure that without any charge to the Exchequer these people of Ihe poorest classes shall be cared for during war time.”