I beg to second the Motion. We have heard from my right hon. Friend a very exhilarating speech. I second the Motion as one of the two Members associated with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Greenock ^Colonel Sir G. Collins) some four years ago, and was responsible with him for the appointment of the Committee on National Expenditure, on which I have had the honour to serve continuously from that day to this. I understand that this Motion has in some quarters been interpreted as a vote of censure on the Government, and more particularly as a personal and political attack on my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the exchequer. I desire to repudiate that with all the vehemence I can command. I believe it is intended, I hope it is intended, I cer- tainly mean to speak to it as though it was intended, not to weaken but to strengthen the hands of the Government; and more particularly do I want to repudiate any suggestion of a personal attack on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom I have always regarded as a very good man struggling with adversity. I will not particularise who the adversity may be, but he has struggled very hard. I will go a great deal further than that. If this Motion were to be interpreted at all as a vote of censure, I consider that it would be a vote of censure less on the Government than on the House of Commons itself. As a fact, we are suggesting nothing of the kind. This Motion is the outcome and expression of an overwhelming and insistent public sentiment, which is deeply aroused to-day and very gravely alarmed at the position of our national finance. That alarm, as I have reason to know, is most acute in quarters that are best informed. It is only the ignorant who are careless in this matter. Those who know the facts most intimately have uttered the most grave warnings again and again. This House would be quite unworthy of its traditions and of its place in the national economy if it refused to heed those warnings and to reiterate and emphasise and endorse them.

What is the real source of these alarms? I think I can put it in a sentence. It is falling trade and diminishing production. That is the portent which inspires this widespread and deep-seated alarm. Most Members of this House, or many of them, are business men, and they are quite as familiar with the facts as I am, but there are many outside the House who are not familiar with them. Let me call attention to the very serious figures of our falling export trade, on which, as my right hon. Friend has truly said, the whole internal prosperity of this country very largely depends. I have here a long list of exports, but I will not trouble the House with it in extenso. The cumulative evidence of these figures is overwhelming. Contrast not the values, which are misleading, but the quantities of goods exported in 1913 and 1919 respectively. The exports of pig-iron fell from 1,124,000 tons in 1913 to 356,985 tons in 1919. The exports of galvanised sheets also fell greatly during the same period. The total exports of iron and steel, and manu- factures thereof, fell from nearly 5,000,000 tons in 1913 to 2,223,000 tons in 1919. Machinery fell from 746,000 tons in 1913 to a little more than 303,000 tons in 1919. Hardware fell from 1,000,000 cwts. in 1913 to 285,000 cwts. in 1919. I might go through the whole list, which shows the same sort of reduction. I submit that though the figures of one trade here or there may mean little, yet the force of this cumulative evidence is simply overwhelming.

What does this decline in our export trade portend? It portends three things. In the first place, perpetuation of inflated prices and the high cost of living, and on that point I desire to associate myself with every word that fell from the Mover of this Motion. It portends, in the second place, a very grave depression of home industries and above all a growing volume of unemployment. I am certain that we shall have no real settling down in our social affairs in this country until we get a very substantial reduction in the cost of living. That is a matter which affects all classes and every individual. It affects more particularly the sort of folk for whom I am particularly privileged to speak in this House If you take a community like that which I have the honour to represent, a community which in the strictly economic sense is not a productive community-I hope and believe that we do make a modest contribution to a commodity which possesses some value though it cannot be measured in a material sense-you will find that for the most part the citizens of a city like Oxford are people of very modest means, living on incomes which if not actually fixed are not elastic. But in this respect all consumers are in the same boat, and nobody in any class is not a consumer. We shall never get a real settlement until we get prices down, and we shall never get prices down until we get the level of production up. Until we get production up we cannot deal in any way drastically or radically with the problem of unemployment. It is impossible to increase production so long as that production is hampered and borne down by the present level of expenditure.

I venture to bring to the attention of the House a passage in a resolution which, I believe, has been already forwarded to the Government, from the executive of the Imperial Commercial Association, a very representative body, closely in touch with the facts of the economic situation. The resolution says:— The present financial position is wholly due to the over-expenditure of public money, both on the part of His Majesty's Government and by local authorities throughout the country. Our industries are being slowly but surely incapacitated, and in many cases destroyed, owing to the extreme measures which restrict credit and render the financing of large enterprises impracticable. This policy is followed by unemployment and acute industrial distress. 5.0 P.M.

I think there is some exaggeration in the terms of that resolution, and I want frankly to say so, but I hold also that there is sufficient truth in it to justify the Motion which is now before the House. The Motion asserts the necessity of restricting our annual national expenditure to a definite sum. The sum which we have taken is the sum calculated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and set forth in detail in a white paper issued in October, 1919. It is only fair to the Chancellor to say that that Paper only professed to contain a very tentative Estimate. It was an Estimate of a normal year, and we were warned very definitely and very explicitly that the year 1920–21 would not be, and could not be, such a normal year. Further, we were told that a normal year would be one in which the following conditions were fulfilled, and it is only right to recall those conditions: (a) That all war services will have ceased and that trading departments (such as food and shipping, etc.) will have been wound up; (b) that all subsidies (bread, railways, unemployment donation, etc.) will have been withdrawn; (c) that no further loans will be made to Allies and Dominions; (d) that the training schemes for ex-soldiers will have been completed and nothing new arisen in their place; and (e) that the cost of labour and materials will not have differed materially from that now obtaining. Those are the conditions laid down by the Chancellor himself, but he himself, despite those very cautious limitations, issued a further Estimate in June, 1920.