BUDGET CRITICIZED

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 172, 17 April 1942, Page 5

BUDGET CRITICIZED

Multiplicity Of Officials LONDON, April 15. “Unnecessary expenditure has probably totalled £2,000,000 a day, and increases in taxation could have been avoided if reasonable economy had been enforced in departments.” said Mr. J. G. Braithwaite (Conservative), in the Budget debate in the House of Commons. "We are not getting efficiency for the taxpayers’ money. We are getting a multiplicity of officials who regard themselves as masters rather than servants of the publie. Many of them are not competent to conduct the vast machinery of this war, and the result is that initiative and incentive are being buried under mountains of paper.” Mr. C. Stephens (1.L.P.), said: “This is a rich man’s Budget, which will cause the utmost disappointment throughout the country. The rich are getting richer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has handed the medicine to the workers and cynically said that the rich cannot pay more. There should be more equality of sacrifice.” Mr. A. Woodburn (Labour) said it was no humdrum Bttdger. but a battledrum Budget. It marshalled the country financially for the whole purpose of the war, and had been accepted in that spirit as a businesslike method of financing it.