GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1930, Page 9

GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED

EMPIRE SMASH FORECAST

MISMANAGEMENT DEPLORED

HOUSE OF LORDS CENSURE

LABOUR BELITTLES OFFER

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.

Rec. 8.15 p.m. London, Dec. 2. Viscount Hailsham, Lord Chancellor in Mr. Baldwin’s Ministry, successfully moved in an unusually crowded House of Lords to-night a motion deploring the Government’s failure to resepond to the Dominions’ offers aiming at closer fiscal relations. Thanks to the Government’s obstinacy and mismanagement it had let down the people of Britain and the Empire, Viscount Hailshani declared. The Ministers had made up their minds before the Imperial Conference against tariff preference, which the ..conference had never seriously considered. > . Lord Hailsham was not surprised at Mr. J. H. Thomas’ offensive and unjustified phrase i “humbug,” for Mr. Philip Snowdon before the conference in a Press article had described all talk of Imperial preference as “bunkum.” If Britain did not prefer the possibilities of a united Empire to election cries of “dear food,” then the disintegration of the Empire must inevitably follow. The only hope for the Ottawa conference was for the people of Britain to be given a chance to condemn the Government’s bigotry and pendantry; Lord Passfield, replying, said the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. R. B. Bennett had proposed that Britain should reverse its fiscal policy by the taxation of food while Canada. merely altered details of its own policy.- It was not the policy of Labour, nor of the Liberals, nor as yet even of. the Conservatives, to’ tax wheat imports for the sake of. preference. Mr. Baldwin’s latest declaration proposed not to tax imported wheat, but to subsidise home-grown wheat out of the proceeds of the s duties on imported manufactures.

Viscount Hailsham’s motion was carried by 74 votes to . 10.