DEFEAT IN COMMONS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 11

DEFEAT IN COMMONS

NO CONFIDENCE MOTION

WORLD'S ECONOMIC ILLS

LABOUE CRITICS

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, December 9.

In resuming the debate on the Labour amendment to the Address in Reply iin the House of Commons today, the Leader of the Opposition (Major C. R. Attlee) said his party held that the sickness of the world today was due far more to economic than political causes, and they challenged the whole position on which the Government stood. There was no indication in its foreign policy that the Government was thinking of the grave perils' facing the world, or of how to remove the growing sense of fear. In home affairs there was the same lack of a coordinated plan or policy. The Government had no proposals for dealing with the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty.

Defending the Government's policy, the Attorney-General (Sir Thomas Inskip) said there were more people in employment than ever before. The Government was not idle in finding new trade channels for distressed areas. Regarding unemployment allowances 'and the "means test," he said that much information had become available from the working of the present system, and the Government would bring forward its proposals at an early date. He declared that by the proposed unification of mining royalties the Government meant the purchase of royalties by the State, involving a change from ownership and control by some 4000 private persons to single ownership and control by the State in the interests of the community.

A Labour amendment condemning the failure of the King's Speech to indicate an effective peace policy, reduction of armaments, measures to deal with unemployment, the miners' claims, and other matters, was defeated by 382 votes to 140.