FISCAL RELATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 134, 4 December 1930, Page 9

FISCAL RELATIONS

CONFERENCE "INQUEST"

HOSTILE MOTION IN LORDS LONDON, 2nd December. In the House of Lords, Viscount Hailsham, in an unusually crowded House, moved a motion deploring the Government's failure to respond to the Domiidons' offers aiming at closer fiscal relations. Viscount Hailsham said that, thanks to the Government's obstinacy and mismanagement, they had let down the people of Britain and the Empire. They had made up their minds "before the Imperial Conference against tariff preference which the Conference never seriously considered. He was not surprised at Mr. Thomas's offensive and unjustified phrase "humbug," for Mr. Snowden before the Conference, ia a Press article, described all talk of Imperial preference as "bunkum." UNITED EMPIRE OR DEAR FOOD? If they did not prefer the possibilities of a United Empire to election cries of dear food, then the disintegration of the Empire must inevitably follow. The only hope for the Ottawa Conference was for the people of Britain to be given a chance to condemn the Government's bigotry and pedantry. Lord Passfield, in reply, said that Mr. K. B. Bennett, Premier of Canada, proposed that Britain should reverse her fiscal policy by the taxation of food while Canada merely altered the details of her owii policy. It was not the policy of Labour or Liberals, nor, as yet, even of Conservatives, to tax wheat imports for the sake of preference. Mr. Baldwin's latest declaration did not propose a tax on imported wheat, but the subsidy of home-grown wheat out of the proceeds of duties on imported manufactures. Lord Hailsham's motion was carried by 74 votes to 10.