Britain’s Economy Report

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6619, 4 August 1931, Page 7

Britain’s Economy Report

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. GRAVITY REALISED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Aug. 1. The report of the Committee appointed to consider the reduction of national expenditure (which was fully summarised in a message published m yesterday’s Times) was issued too late for full comment by the Press, and newspapers are inclined to reserve detailed criticisms until after further study and to confine themselves to comments of a general kind. The importance of the report, which is described by the Daily Telegraph as a “bold and comprehensive document” is fully recognised, and the Morning Post says the authors ‘ ‘ deserve the gratitude of the whole nation for their ruthless exposure of the real gravity of the situation, which becomes confused even in the minds of experts.” The majority proposals for economies totalling £96,500,009 to help to meet the deficit next year, which they estimate at £120,000,000, are, says The Times, “drastic and challenging,” and, after calculating that £88,500,000 of savings arc to bo effective on unemployment insurance, education, and road maintenance and development, and only £8,000,000 over the whole of the rest of public expenditure, Tho Times comments that the ‘ ‘ broad conclusion tnerefore is the repetition of the old Jesson that economy depends on policy.” All parties therefore will have to realise that much prejudice and theory must be discarded if Parliament is to carry through the necessary measures. The Morning Post says that whether all the suggestions advocated aro feasible in their entirety or not, the great merit of the report is that it reveals the scope of the problem without fear or favour, and makes suggestions which provide an invaluable starting pm ll *- for discussion. The Manchester Guardian thinks that tho proposals aro “not so much courageous as heroic. The savings forecasted are substantially greater than those attained in the German Budget by Dr. Bruening’s emergency decrees, which were reckoned as the Jiigliwater mark of retrenchment when they were promulgated.” The Guardian thinks that the estimated savings to be effected by the proposals aro probably over sanguine in some phases. But it concludes, “To criticise the details is neither difficult nor helpful. The point is that the Committee has set a standard to which its critics must conform. The alternative to the proposals is not to go on as we are now, but to find a better way to the same end.” The papers generally discount the possibility of a national or coalition Government in the autumn to deal with the economy question which has been discussed in some quarters.