BRITISH BANKING

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 144, 20 June 1931, Page 13

BRITISH BANKING

MACMILLAN REPORT

CRITICISM. RENEWED

LONDON, 19th June.

Despite an official denial of Btatil* ments contained in the "Daily Herald's" forecast of the Hacmillan report on British banking and finance, tfcft "Evening Standard's" financial correspondent agrees that the report will seriously question the Bank of England's financial policy.

He cays: "The committee i» jiatlfied in raising the issue that the bank'» policy has been a major influence in our loss of exports, growing unemployment, and loss of industrial capital. y - "Some committeemen hold that the bank has failed to keep in touch with industrial requirements, and has followed too rigidly pre-war conceptions. "The automatic working of the gold standard restricted credit when its release would have led to an improvement in trade, injured the export trade by, embargoes on foreign loans, and meant the maintenance of unnecessarily high money rates."

The Compiittee, which sat under th« chairmanship of Lord Macmillan, K.C., who was Lord Advocate of Scotland in 1924, and Chairman of fhe Court of Inquiry into the mining dispute of, 1925, was appointed by Mr.'Philip Snowden in November, 1929. The announcement stated that the Committee would inquire -into banking, finance, and credit, "paying regard to the factors both, internal and international which govern their operation and would make recommendations" calculated to enable these agencies to promote the development of trade and commerce, and employment of labour.'' The Committee, it was generally known, was the outcome of the suspicion of the Government that the English banking system might have failed to maintain the development necessary to meet modern currency needs, and at the back of the whole question was the issue of reform of the Bank of England. Mr. Snowden, having regard , only to the need to obtain facts^ cast round for tha best and most representative commit* tee tfiat he could obtain; Included in those appointed were the famous names 'of Lord Bradbury, Permanent Secretary to'the Treasury from 1913 to 1918, and principal British representative on the Reparations Commission; Professor T. E. Gregory, of London. University; Mr. J. XL Keynes, Mr. Reginald M'Kenna, the famous Liberal Chancellor, Mr. Cecil Lub^bock, former deputy-governor of "the Bank of England, and Mr. Lennox B. Lee, president of the Federation of Britiah. Industries. ' . •