CENSURE OF GOVERNMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1930, Page 9

CENSURE OF GOVERNMENT

HOUSE OF COMMONS MOTION PRINCIPLE OF SAFEGUARDING LABOUR STANDING GROUN1 1 British Wireless. Rugby, July 16. Mr. Stanley Baldwin moved a vote of censure oh the Government in the House of Commons this evening. Tho motion declared that the House, believing that a return to prosperity could only he promoted by safeguarding the home markets against unfair competition and by expanding export markets by reciprocal trade agreements with the Empire overseas, regretted that the Government had reversed the policy of safeguarding instead of extending it, and had arbitrarily excluded from consideration the imposition of duties on foreign foodstuffs devised io obtain equivalent advantages for British manufactures and agriculture in the British markets and elsewhere.

Mr. Baldwin invited Air. Philip Snowden (Chancellor of the Exchequer) .to state the policy the Government intended to follow at the Imperial Conference. Mr. Snowden, replying, said the Government would be no party to food taxes or a tax on raw material or protective duties. It would enter the Imperial Conference barring no questions from discussion, but it would be made abundantly clear that- it woud approve of no final conclusion which involved Britain in a food taxation policy or a general protectionist policy. Outside that there were plenty of questions of great importance which the Imperial Conference could discuss. Regarding safeguarding he declared that the Opposition could not point in any of the safeguarded industries to any marked effect which the duties had had in improving the position for trade. Mr. Lloyd George supported the attitude taken by the Government. . Mr. Snowden said there could be no question of co-operation with the Conservatives on the basis of Labour sacrificing its principles.

DEFEAT OF THE Af O'l’l ON.

PREMIER ANSWERS AIR. BALDWIN.

Roe. 7.5 p.m. London, July .1(5. Mr. Lloyd George said Mr. Baldwin’s censure motion was the most inexplicable he had over heard. Mr. Baldwin was 1 condemning the Government for repudiating food taxes which he had himself repudiated only a few weeks ago. Mr. Baldwin had been on a sliding staircase; be had not moved, but had been moved. In fact, he had been pushed about rather badly by his own followers. Unemployment was too grave to be used merely for manoeuvres. "What w.c want and what the Dominions want is a hard, Concrete policy which will moot the agricultural and industrial- needs,” said Sir Oswald Mosley. “Wherever you turn, from the T.U.C. report io the bankers’, you find a growing consensus of opinion that it is desirable to insulate this country from the shocks of world conditions.” Mr. MacDonald recalled Air. Baldwin’s pledge at Drury Lane in April, 1929, in which he pledged the Conservatives not to impose food taxes. If Mr. Baldwin was not going to violate that pledge what was the difference between them? Not a single Dominion could give Britain substantial preference on manufactured articles in relation to industries which themselves were established behind tariff walls. At the Imperial Conference the Government would take up the position regarding food taxes which every member of the party took up when asking for votes at the last general election. The censure motion was defeated by 312 votes to 241.

The Daily Telegraph says that Mr. Snowden in ruling out protectio from the discussions at the Imperial Conference, suppressed the main interest with which Dominion statesmen were anticipating the conference. What view the Dominions would take of his statement would soon be known. “In the view of the great majority here it is insanity,” the paper adds.