MOTION FAILS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 13

MOTION FAILS

BRITAIN'S WORKLESS LABOUR CONTENTION DEFEATED IN HOUSE INDUSTRY AND FUTURE By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Received February 17, 0.5 p.m.) British Wireless LONDON, Feb. 17 A debate on unemployment was raised in the House of Commons on the Labour resolution moved by Mr. Arthur Greenwood. The motion regretted the continued failure of the Government either to produce definite plans for the provision of, work and wages under the present system or to initiate a policy which recognised that the problem could only be solved by the application of socialist principles. In calling upon the Government to advance proposals to meet the situation, Mr. Greenwood reviewed the position in the shipbuilding, cotton, agriculture and other industries, which ho said were in a depressed condition. Ho contrasted this fact with the assertion in tho memorandum of the Itoyal Economic Society that the increase in physical output per operative in the last five years amounted to 27 per cent, and, in i the case of tho engineering industry, to 57 per cent. Reply by Minister Mr. Greenwood urged the need for great public schemes of land drainage and the development of roads and transport, as well as work in connection with tho protection of the civil population in the time of war.

Tho Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Brown, said that, although there was no difference in the country about the gravity of some aspects of the problem, it could not be stated in the terms which Mr. Greenwood had used. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Oliver Stanley, said the Government would like to see the van Zeeland report operating, but, looking at the world, he did not believe that a world conference for lowering trade barriers could be anything but an ignominious failure. Hope in Export Trade Our hope for the future, Mr. Stanley added, lay in the export trade. If we could hold and increase it in the coming year, an effective inroad would bo made on unemployment. He believed the whole country was ready for a forward move if the fear of war could be removed.

There were countries complaining of a shortage of raw materials which would get less if all their demands were granted than was obtainable by tho stroke of a pen in removing the tension they had created. He believed there had been a lightening of the tension in the last few weeks. The motion was defeated by 334 votes to 146.