SPECIAL AREAS BILL

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 March 1937, Page 7

SPECIAL AREAS BILL

DEBATE IN COMMONS [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, March 12. The House of Commons agreed to the money resolution which is a preliminary to the Government’s Special Areas Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Neville Chamberlain) spoke in the debate after Mr. Lloyd George, who made an appeal for the development of land settlement in the special areas as a contribution to national defence.

Mr. Chamberlain cited figures for unemployment in the special areas which had been reduced by 120,000 in a little more than two years, and in South Wales, perhaps the most difficult area, by 20 per cent. It was the policy of the Government to take advantage of the rearmament programme •to direct as much work as possible into these districts. Up to the end of November, orders totalling £41,000,000 tvent to needy districts, of which £24,000,000 went to the special areas proper. By the end of January, those totals were raised respectively to £57,000,000 and £35,000,000. The Chancellor described the advantages the special areas had derived from the revival of the iron and steel industry, from the shipping subsidy and increased ship-building, and from the effects of trade agreements on coal exports. Mr. Chamberlain said he thought that the inducements to the location of new industries in the special areas which the Government’s bill would provide would prove effective. He said that Mr. Lloyd George had not convinced him that the authorities were wrong who held that in land settlement one must, go cautiously. It would be impossible to put half a million people back on the land without raising agricultural prices and destroying relations with the Dominion and foreign producers. It was not an occasion for him to enter on the defence aspects of agriculture, but they might rest assured that it was receiving the Government’s attention.