PLANNED ECONOMY

Evening Star, Issue 25701, 26 January 1946, Page 5

PLANNED ECONOMY

BRITISH GOVERNMENT MEASURE INDUSTRIAL RECONSTRUCTION LONDON, January 23. A National Investment Council will be established to assist the Government in organising and stimulating investment and to promote lull employment. This was announced in a memorandum accompanying tne Investment (Control and Guarantees) Bill published to-day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Hugh Dalton, in an interview described the Investment Bill as an " anti-6lump measure to encourage private enterprise to face up to the depression and go ahead a little longer." He said that the Bill contained two operative clauses. The Government under one, broadly speaking, sought to give permanence to war-time powers to control the raising of money. It was intended to continue the Capital Issues Committee establishe'd in 19.'?9, which would be the Government's principal instrument for carrying out the powers in clause one. " The Government thinks it necessary to make permanent its power to control the raising of money. Because of tile danger of inflation, we are taking steps to guard against it," said Mr Dalton. " There is no doubt that if there

were no controls in the field of capital development no less than in the field of consumer goods, there would be many capital issues launched. All sorts otf sharks would thrust out their noses, as after the last war. If there was no control in the capital market, money rates would be forced up Many people would get away with money from new issues when they were not even entitled to stand at the end of the queue.". He did not think there would be serious opposition to the taking of powers They would be used with discretion, skill, a'nd judgment. Mr Dalton, discussing the clause which concerned loans to private concerns, emphasised that the guarantee of loans to £50.000.000 in any financial year was to assist private enterprise only Government and local authority loans carried an automatic guarantee. Nationalised industries would borrow direct from the Treasury, and the Government would thus be able to put into private industries loans substantially at the gilt-edged rate, whatever it might he at the time. There is little in the Investment Bill which is likely to cause any great misgivings, says ' The Times ' City editor. The Bill envisages the continuation of the present system, and the Government's intention to make the powers permanent—which is all the Bill joes— was already known.