EFFECT OF BILL ON TRADERS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25299, 26 September 1947, Page 8

EFFECT OF BILL ON TRADERS

VIEWS OF CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE

“ CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE”

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, September 25. “The provisions of the Control of Prices Bill have been carefully considered by my executive, and we have come to the conclusion .that it is not only unnecessary but also biased, unduly restrictive, and likely to make even worse the disease which it is trying to cure,” said the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce (Mr Haskell Anderson) to-day. While it might be contended,that a Sood deal of what was contained in the ill was justified by precedent, it was not to be forgotten that there was a big difference between severe measures borne during the emergencies of war on the one hand and on the other the placing of these restrictions on a permanent peace-time basis. “The fact that the Government finds it necessary not only to hang a collar permanently around the necks of industry, commerce, and the retail trade, but now to put spikes in the collar as well, is a plain admission of the Government’s failure to deal with the problem of supplies and prices instead of realising that there must be something wrong with the collar. “The Government is likely to find the spikes will worsen rather than improve the performance of the horse. Control is itself responsible for a number of the present ills in the field of goods and services and prices and the intensification of control is only going to make confusion worse confounded,” Mr Anderson said.

Effect of Price Controls The shortage of many needed lines was largely because price control had not made it worth while to produce many of those goods. The Associated Chambers of Commerce were prepared to see the continuance of lairly-designed price control for the period of Britain’s emergency but they had not been confronted with the bill when they put their names to the Aid to Britain conference resolutions.

It appeared that the tribunal was to be packed with an unlimited number of associate members who would probably know nothing about the conduct of business and act accordingly. Judicial determinations of the present tribunal were to be replaced by the directives of bureaucrats and laymen who would, no doubt, be appointed from sectional interests. The trader, under pain of the most severe penalties, was to be held guilty on any information laid by irresponsible snoopers until he could prove himself innocent—a disgraceful reversal of British law.

INTENTION TO FIGHT BILL

ASSOCIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE The determination of the Associated Chambers of Commerce to oppose strongly the Control of Prices Bill was indicated by the president, Mr Haskell Anderson, when speaking at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce last evening. “We are going to fight, and fight to the bitterest end on this,” said Mr Anderson. Mr Anderson said that the bill, which would be having its second reading in the House of Representatives that evening, had been brought down at a time when it was not expected that price control would be put on the Statute Book and implemented for all time. At the national conference on aid to Britain the Associated Chambers of Commerce did agree that some form of continuance of price control was necessary to prevent inflation and protect tHe national economy, but they did not give an open mandate.