SUGAR INDUSTRY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 62, 11 February 1936, Page 7

SUGAR INDUSTRY

BILL IN THE COMMONS. (British Official "Wireless.) RUGBY, Feb. 9. In the House of Commons on Monday the Government’s Bill to give effect to proposals for the reorganisation of the sugar industry, announced last summer, will come up for its second reading.. The Bill provides for the appointment of a permanent sugar commission with the duty of keeping under review the growing of sugar beet and the manufacture, refining, marketing, and consumption of sugar, with advisory functions primarily but limited executive authority in certain technical matters. Beet-sugar manufacturing companies are amalgamated in a single corporation, which will be obliged to purchase home-grown sugar beet upon terms either agreed with the growers’ organisation or fixed by the Sugar Commission

The Bill authorises the payment of assistance to the corporation, which is not limited by time but by quantity—namely, in respect of not more than the equivalent of 560,000 tons of white sugar in any one year, so that the corporation may pay growers of sugar beet at contract price. The cost of assistance for 1936 is estimated at £2,700,000. The Labour Opposition will move the rejection of the Bill on the grounds that it perpetuates a sugar-beet subsidy and, while devoting public money to "the promotion of private interests, fails to provide for public ownership and control of the sugar industry. Two days of House or Commons time later in the week, will be devoted to education. Private members’ motions to l>c debated on Wednesday deal with educational ■ topics, and on Thursday the President of the Board of Education will move the second reading of the Education Bill, which provides for the raising of the school-leaving age. The Labour Party will also oppose this measure, claiming that the provisions for exemption will render the higher age-limit inoperative. .