DALTON’S ‘UNREAL’ BUDGET: NO INFLATION CHECK

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1947, Page 6

DALTON’S ‘UNREAL’ BUDGET: NO INFLATION CHECK

LONDON, November 13. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Dr Hugh Dalton), who said in his Budget speech that he believed his proposals “imposed no serious hardship on any citizen” is criticised on that ground: The Times, in a leading article, says. “If no hardships are imposed it seems at once that some - thing must be wrong. A Budget designed to meet the country’s worst economic crisis must cause some hardship. It fails to meet the requirements if it does not.” The Daily Telegraph, though it points out that the general effect of the Budget is to increase the price of nearly everything except food, comments that there is no evidence to support any conclusion that the Budget effectively counters the inflationary forces. The Parliamentary correspondent of The Times says that the main criticism seems to be that the Budget is inadequate to achieve the Chancellor’s object of checking inflation. The Financial Times says: “Westminster has seldom been so unanimous. Members of Parliament of the extreme Right and extreme Left are agreed that Dr Dalton’s measures to lessen inflation are negligible.” It refers to the Budget as “unreal” and says: “Dr Dalton has shown that he does not propose any serious cuts in expenditure. Nothing could be more depressing' in its implications in the present crisis.” The Daily Herald says: “The measures which the Government has taken have so far prevented that breakaway inflation which afflicts so many other countries. The further measures Dr Dalton has announced cannot fairly be objected to by any class. The Government has done well to stand its ground on food subsidies.” “The City’s easy money drones went home with Dr Dalton’s song in their hearts after hearing the mild Budget,” says the Daily . Express. “The gamblers had been going for a really fierce Budget which would have' mopped up millions of surplus money. They had for weeks discounted the expected heavier profits tax, and they now find that otherwise the Budget is a gift—like all Dr Dalton’s Budgets—Tor speculators.”