FIVE-YEAR PLAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24256, 26 March 1940, Page 13

FIVE-YEAR PLAN

(From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON,', Feb. 16. Women M.P.’s were very much to the front in Whitehall and Westminster on St. Valentine’s Day, for, following a deputation led by Lady Astor in the morning to Captain Crookshank concerriing women’s war work, Mrs Tate, MP for Frome, did battle royal with the Government Front Bench during the agricultural debate in the House of Commons, and was supported by some Conservative members who sit for rural constituencies, as well ss by the entire Socialist and Liberal Oppositions. She divided the House against the Government, and coaxed 149 members into the lobby with her. But for the fact that a meeting of M.P.’s was taking place in another part of the building she is convinced that the Government would have been beaten. Their majority was only 33. Mrs Tate had an amendment designed to plough’up more land. The' Government wanted her to drop it. Its critics in all parrties urged her to fight on it. Under the Government’s ploughing-up scheme, which was introduced a year ago, a subsidy of £2 per acre is paid to the farmer for ploughing up land which has been unploughed for seven years. Mrs Tate’s amendment was to pay the subsidy for ploughing land which has been unploughed for five years. That might seem a minor point to raise a major storm. But critics accused the Government of following a peacetime policy of improving the land, when what is wanted is 'a_ wartime policy of maximum production of food from the land. Mrs Tate said her “ five-year plan had the support of farmers everywhere. “ Shylock’s Bond ” The main attack, after a number of preliminary skirmishes, came from Mr Lloyd George. Ostensibly his speech was in support of an amendment removing flaws from the bill which deals with Catchment Board drainage schemes. He found little difficulty in arraigning the Cabinet as a whole for the bill as a whole, which he roundly described as a “ sham, a downright piece of cheating of the public. The clause provides in a series of permissive steps for the drainage of land provided that the cost does not exceed £5 an acre Mr Lloyd George described the figure as “a Shylock’s bond applied to something on which the life of Britain may . depend.” A sum of £230.000 was being spent in place of the £50,000,000 which was needed. He requoted, a figure of 7.000,000 acres in this country requiring drainage. There wa s a Welsh proverb which said. “A nound head and a halfpenny tail.” Flinging his copy of the bill on the table, “This is your halfpenny tail.” Mr Lloyd George concluded. It had been a magnificent bravura performance, and the House cheered him. The speech came as the climax to an evening which indicated a certain restiveness concerning the adequacy of the Government’s response to the emergency in home food production.