CRIPPS IS DETERMINED NOT TO DEVALUE POUND STERLING

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 May 1948, Page 5

CRIPPS IS DETERMINED NOT TO DEVALUE POUND STERLING

"Headaches" Await Britain In Tying Her Economy In With Others

(N.Z.P.A.—Copyright.) Received 6.25 p.m. LONDON, May 7 Tlie Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Cripps), during a debate on the Finance Bill in the House of Commons, which legalises the Budget proposals, reaffirmed the Government’s determination not to devalue the pound sterling.

It would be extreme folly and could not help in the British export trade because Britain was already exporting as much as possible, he said. It would piean Britain would have to pay twice as much for imports. She would have to export very much more to get less than she is getting now.

"We do not yet know what the position will be under the European recovery programme," he said. "When we come to consider the problems of more closely associating our economy with western Europe, and the Commonwealth and Empire we shall find there many economic problems which will cause us considerable headaches.”

Sir Stafford Cripps said that at tlie recent Finance Ministers’ conference at Brussels he had given an assurance of Britain’s willingness to adapt her economy to that co-operation if others were prepared to do the same. He was confident the country was behind him in that promise, which meant that we must contemplate considerable readjustments in our economy as that co-operation developed. We might have to agree that we should not manufacture certain things, and that other countries shall manufacture them for us, and vice versa. He added that if they were to get any measure of co-operation it must not be on a basis of the sharp competition of the past between different’countries. That was indeed what economic co-operation was bound to mean. The Bill was read a second time without division.