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PROGRAMME AND BUDGET COMMISSION Chairman: Professor Paulo de Berredo Carneiro (Brazil) Vice-Chairmen : Professor Jean Piaget (Switzerland) Mr. P. Ogrodzinski (Poland) Rapporteur: Mr. W. D. Pile (United Kingdom) The Programme and Budget Commission sat during the whole period of the Conference when its members were not in plenary session. The New Zealand delegate attended during the whole of the sittings of the Commission as well as during the plenary sessions, and seized a number of opportunities of speaking on the points which were regarded as important by the National Commission. In general the discussion in the Programme Commission tended in the direction of the National Commission's instructions, and generally in line with the attitude of the United Kingdom delegation. Since the Conference was intended to be of a restricted business character given over to the consideration of the proposals made at the Beirut Conference, there was a general agreement on many issues to defer consideration of any new major issues until the fifth General Conference at Florence in 1950. There were, therefore, no fundamentally important changes to the programme as presented. There were, however, two points of sharp conflict which occupied much of the time of the Commission. These were (1) the question of when and how to fix a ceiling figure for the Budget, and (2) the question of UNESCO's activities in western Germany. The Fixing of a Ceiling Figure for the Budget Before the details of the programme were considered—that is, right at the outset —the leader of the United Kingdom delegation made an able speech advocating the procedure which had been adopted at Beirut and Mexico of fixing the Budget ceiling before considering the programme proposals, on the ground that we must know how much cloth we have before cutting out our garment. It was plain during the whole course of the Conference that the United Kingdom delegation had been instructed by their Government to look very strictly into the question of financial obligation—this became plainer still when, during the course of the Conference, the announcement was published concerning the devaluation of the pound. The New Zealand delegate spoke to this question in support of the United Kingdom proposal, maintaining that the presence in the minds of delegates of a limiting figure would act as a psychological brake upon the tendency to let things go through without sufficiently careful examination.