Price Control Bill Said To Be Biased

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 September 1947, Page 7

Price Control Bill Said To Be Biased

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The provisions of the Control of Prices Bill have been carefully considered by my executive and we have come to the conclusion that it is not only unnecessary but also biased, unduly restrictive, and likely to make even worse the disease which it is trying to cure,” stated the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce,* Mr Haskell Anderson, today. *

While it might be contended that a good deal of what was contained in the Bill was justified by precedent, it was not to be forgotten that there was a big difference between severe measures borne during the emergencies of war, one the one hand, and, on the other, the placing of these restrictions on a permanent peace-time basis.

“The fact that the Government finds it necessary not only to hang a collar permanently around the necks of industry, commerce and the retail trade, but now to put spikes in the collar as well, is a plain admission of the Government’s failure to deal with the problem of supplies and prices. Control is itself responsible for a number of present .ills in the field of goods and services and prices, and intensification of the control is only to make confusion worse confounded.”

Reason for Shortages

Mr Anderson said the shortage of many needed lines was largely because thereby firms were spurred to production. An incentive was given to industry and the public got the benefit resulting from lower prices induced by competition. The Bill did nothing positive. On the contrary it would depress the supply situation still further by purely negative restriction and policing. The Associated Chambers of Commerce were prepared to see a. continuance of airly designed price control for the period of Britain’s emergency, but they had not been confronted with the Bill when they put their names to the Aid-to-Britain conference resolutions. It appeared that the tribunal was to be packed with an unlimited number of associate members, who would probably

know nothing about the conduct of business and act accordingly. The judicial determinations of the present tribunal were to be replaced by the directives of bureaucrats and laymen, who would no doubt be appointed from sectional interests. Reversal of British Law

The trader, under pain of the most severe penalties, was to be held guilty on any information laid by irresponsible snoopers until he could prove himself innocent—a disgraceful reversal of British law. In the Cham.bers’ view the tribunal should be kept on a temporary or emergency basis and the scope of its authority should be reduced progressively and as rapidly as possible with a view to its ultimate elimination from the economic set-up of the Dominion. • The members of the tribunal should be independent and well Qualified to weigh judicially the evidence on economic issues placed before them. They should be limited to two, plus a permanent chairman, and the proposal to appoint associate members, who could only be partisan one way or the other, should be struck out on the grounds that the tribunal should be a judicial body free from bias either way, and that all partisan points should be submitted to the tribunal in the iorm of evidence only.