FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMONS DEBATE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 9

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

COMMONS DEBATE

RAW MATERIALS AND MEMEL

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received December 7, 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, December 6. Questions addressed to the Government in the course of the foreign affairs debate in the House of Commons tonight included that of distribu- ! tion of colonial raw materials and the situation in MemeL Replying to the former, Sir Samuel Hoare repeated his Geneva assurance of readiness to investigate the whole question. He believed that the problem was an economic and not a politicar or territorial one. When it came to be investigated it would, he thought, be found, certainly in the present conditions, that the main problem was one of selling raw materials rather than of buying raw materials. At the same time there were these anxieties in the world, and since they existed they had better be investigated. The Government was ready for such an investigation, but it must take place in a calm and dispassionate atmosphere. Mr. Anthony Eden, in a brief reference to Memel, said he was happy to be able to confirm the information in the Press that negotiations in Memel territory had resulted in the formation of a directorate of four members. The Government regarded it as a good augury for .the future, and trusted that all the parties concerned would approach in a spirit of conciliation the difficulties which remained to be solved before the situation in the territory could be regarded as wholly satisfactory.

The debate in the House today was continued by back benchers, who dealt principally with the "means test" situation in the coal industry and agricultural policy.'

Mr. Robert Boothby, the Conservative member for East spoke of increasing consumption as an alternative policy to restricting production, and urged that the; whole policy of agricultural subsidies should be revised in the light of experience.

Replying for the Government, Lord Eustace Percy claimed that the Government's policy in its broad lines was directed to increasing consumption.