WORK AND, WAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 40, 17 February 1939, Page 9

WORK AND, WAGES

NO DEFINITE PLANS

LABOUR CRITICISM

COMMONS DEBATE

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received February 17, 11.20 a.m.)

RUGBY, February 16,

A debate on unemployment was raised in the House of Commons on a Labour resolution moved by Mr. Arthur Greenwood which regretted the continued failure of the Govern-

ment either to produce definite plans for the provision of work and wages under the present system or to initiate a policy which recognised that the problem could only be solved by the application of Socialist principles.

In calling upon the Government to advance proposals to meet the situation, Mr. Greenwood reviewed the position in the shipbuilding, cotton, agriculture, and other industries, which were in a depressed condition, and contrasted this fact with an assertion in a memorandum of the Royal Economic Society that the increase in physical output per operative during the last five years amounted to 27 per cent, and in the case of the engineering industry to 57 per cent. He urged the need for great public schemes of land drainage development, roads, and transport, as well as work in connection with the protection of the civil population in' time of war. The Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Brown, said that although there was no difference in the country abo.ut the gravity of some aspects of the problem, it could not be stated in the terms Mr. Greenwood had used.