FOOD STORAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 15

FOOD STORAGE

ESSENTIAL COMMODITIES EMPOWERING LEGISLATION EXPLAINED NEEDS IN EMERGENCY (British Official Wireless) (United Press Association' (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) RUGBY. June 2. The House of Commons to-day passed without a discussion the second reading of the Essential Commodities Reserves Bill. The Bill confers important new powers on the Board of Trade and gives retrospective authority for the purchases already made by the Government of wheat and whale oil for storage against a national emergency. In moving the second reading of the Bill, the President of the Board of Trade (Mr Oliver Stanley) said there was no dispute as to the desirability of the Government being in a position to accumulate stocks of essential commodities for use in a possible emergency. The service departments were already entitled to bear upon their votes the accumulation of reserves of petroleum or other minerals for the use of the services, and the Bill gave similar privileges to the Board of Trade with respect to commodities for the civil population. Food storage, Mr Stanley said, was essentially a defence question, and as such must, in fall within the function of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence (Sir Thomas Inskip), but the Board of Trade was obviously more closely in touch with commercial interests and more conversant with the commercial methods which would have to be used in execution of the policy when it had been once decided. The schedule of the Bill, he said, provided that commodities which might be declared essential were limited to foodstuffs, forage for animals, fertilisers and petroleum. Further legislation would be necessary to add to the list. The reason why the Government had decided to confine the Bill tc a typq of commodities absolutely certain to be required in an emergency was in order to minimise the disturbance which the taking of these unusual important powers might have upon normal business.

Mr Stanley gave the House some details of the transactions already carried out. He added that no further purchases of any of these three commodities were at present contemplated. The aim of the food storage policy was precautionary, not preventive, and the proposals of the Bill must be viewed, in that perspective. It was impossible to make a country independent of outside supplies except for a short period, and the first line of defence against shortage was to ensure continued command of the sea.