DEFENCE OUTLAY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19881, 7 March 1939, Page 6

DEFENCE OUTLAY

BRITISH PROGRAMME

THIRD READING OF BILL

SUPPORT NECESSARY

lABODE EXPLANATION

(Klee. Tel. Copyright —United Press Assn.) (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 1.40 p.m. RUGBY, Mar. 6. The Defence Loans Bill to-day passed the final stages in the House of Commons. Mr. F. W. Pethick-Lawrence (Lab., East Edinburgh) for the Opposition said that they did not propose to divide the House against the third reading. “Despite our opposition to much of the Government’s policy, out of which, in our opinion, the need for this bill arises, we find ourselves driven into the position of not opposing the bill,’’ he said.

“The bill does not arise because the Government’s foreign policy has been successful, but because it has been a failure and the fact that we are taking this course does not mean that we abate in any respect our hostility to a great deal of the Government’s action abroad, nor does it commit us to acquiescing, in any way, in the allocation which the Chancellor decides to make between taxing and borrowing.” Mr. Pethick-Lawrence went on to urge upon the Government the necessity of marrying the plan for economic recovery to a plan for monetary expansion inherent in the measure before the House. Mj\ Wilfred Roberts (Lib., North Cumberland) for the Liberals argued the urgency, if the country were .to hold its own in the armaments race, of mobilising for industry by proper economic planning of the wasted manpower of the unemployed.

Mr. Henderson Stewart (LiberalNational) claimed that the debate showed the .unanimity of the House on the question of defence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, replying for the Government, emphasised that the Government had never conceived that in tine rearmament programme of £1,500,000,000 eleven-fifteenths was to be regarded as an annual charge and four-fifteentlhis ,as a capital charge. There was never any idea of a conscious attempt to apportion the total between capital and non-capital, expenditure in those proportions.

On the contrary, they were throwing a very considerable part of the capital expenditure upon revenue. They were justified in ,getting a very substantial amount by way of loan. They were actually raising for defence, out of revenue, twice as much as in 1934. He was satisfied that the indications were favourable and the best opinion, was that the country could shoulder this burden.