THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23691, 24 December 1938, Page 11

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT MANY POINTS DISCUSSED (Brltlsn Official Wireless) RUGBY, Dec. 22. The international drug traffic, air raids precautions, and unemployment were discussed on the motion for the adjournment of the House of Commons. The Under-secretary of Foreign Affairs (Mr R. A. Butler) said the Government viewed with grave concern the situation in connection with the drug traffic as described by the League's Advisory Committee on drug traffic. The Government was in communication with other Governments regarding the communication addressed by the committee to the Governments on the growth of the traffic in the Far East. It was decided, with one or two exceptions, the Minister said, to retain in . reconstructed form the trenches dug in the royal parks in London as an air-raid precaution during the emergency last September. Mr J. J. Lawson (Labour) raised the question of unemployment, and stressed the sapping of moral fibre and the destruction of self-respect by long periods of involuntary idleness suffered in areas where unemployment was most severe. Replying for the Government, Mr Ernest Brown (Minister of Labour) denied any lack of sensitiveness on the part of the Ministers to the tragedy of unemployment or any wish to deny the deterioration in employment figures, which, he thought, was inevitable and consequent on the fall in the, price level of primary commodities. At the same time, it was right to recognise that there had been a great increase in relieving people as a whole over the past four years as a result of the fall in the cost of living, and that the relief of the misfortunes of unemployment through the insurance scheme, public assistance and general social services was on a scale not matched in any other country in the world.