NEW TYPE OF BUDGET

Evening Star, Issue 25400, 3 February 1945, Page 6

NEW TYPE OF BUDGET

MAN POWER AND FULL EMPLOYMENT STATE'S RESPONSIBILITY DEFINED Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright (Rec. 12.45 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 2. The main instrument of a full-em-ployment policy is a new type of Budget based on man power, said Sir William Beveridge, who was recently elected to the House of Commons, when moving the executive's resolution on employment-at the Liberal Party's conference. He denned full employment as more paid jobs than men and women looking for jobs. Ho said, employment depended on spending. It must become the State's responsibility to ensure that total spending was adequate for fall employment, but it must be spending to advantage,"'namely,'spending on a long-term programme of attack against want, disease, ignorance, and squalor, and at the 6ame _ time spending to raise the standard of living, by increasing the output per head. While maintenance was adequate, total spending must be the State's responsibility. That did not mean that a large part thereof should be directly undertaken by the State. Most spending in a free community would be that of private citizens spending for consumption according to their means. The Liberal Party' B policy, while accepting nationalisation of particular industries for special reasons, left the' greater part of industry to private enterprise. The policy took as its aim a maximum of international trade consistent with stability. This aim should be pursued with and- on the basis of full employment at home. Export ■ trade was too vital to leave its adequate development to chance, but there should be no departure from the view _ that economic nationalism was an evil. The resolution, in ' addition to the points made by Sir William (Beveridge, called for a national minimum wage, adequate social services, and allowances, and for the immediate institution of a comprehensive national health scheme without charge for treatment. The resolution was carried with only four dissentients after the overwhelming defeat of an amendment advocating land taxation, removal of restrictions on production, the establishment of Freetrade, and the abolition of legallymaintained restrictive practices preventing the functioning of free market at home.