FRENCH FINANCE BILL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19255, 18 February 1926, Page 9

FRENCH FINANCE BILL.

OBSTRUCTION IN CHAMBER. BRIAND WINS IN THE END. TAX PROPOSALS ADOPTED. By Telegraph—Press Associations-Copyright. Reuter. PARIS. Feb. 16. The Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies rejected, by 13 votes to 8, the Government's proposed tax payments. Tlie.se were the main features of the programme of the Finance Minister, M. Doumer. The Chamber was engaged over the week-end in a sort of game of ninepins—rejecting or shelving successive clauses in the Finance Hill for the provision of new revenue from increases in certain indirect taxes. The Government had fixed to-day as the time limit for sending up to the Senate the special part of the bill which would yield the necessary funds to meet the estimated budgetary deficit. The time limit was running out., and the gap to be filled was widening when the Premier, M. Briand, appealed to the Chamber to vote the funds needed. The appeal wa3 fruitless. A Socialist deputy, M. Renaudel, attacked M. Briand, asserting that ho had dislocated the majority of the CarteL Bill Finally Goes Through. M. Briand, in his reply, virtually accepted a divorce from the Socialists. He said the latter had rendered the agreedupon solution of the country's financial problems impossible. The Government was determined, however, to go right through with the Finance Bill. After the vote in the Chamber it would be sent to the Senate to put into shape. The Government would return it the same day to the Chamber for it to take or leave. If the Chamber refused to give the Government the means of governing, the latter would realise that the time had come to pass the responsibility of office on to other shoulders. After an all-night sitting the Chamber voted the new taxes by 258 votes to 145, M. Briand having made it a matter of confidence. The members of the Right bloc and the Communists voted against the taxes. The Socialists abstained from voting. Other Matters For Debate. The Chamber had previously adopted, by 389 votes to 112, the Finance Committee's rejection of the tax payments already mentioned. M. Doumer did not make this a matter of confidence. Subsequently the Chamber adopted the fiscal clause of the Finance Bill abrogating earlier measures in so far as they are contrary to the present bill. The position resulting from the vote in the Chamber is that the new tax proposals will now go to the Senate. These taxes will yield one and a-half milliards of francs and will furnish an immediate revenue to the Treasury. The Chamber will now discuss the Treaty of Locarno, the Budget and the Electoral Reform Bill. It will also consider the Government's further new taxos to meet the Treasury's deficit, which is estimated at two and a-half milliards of francs.