I am quoting from the printed Paper issued by the Chancellor himself, and that is not specified in it. He said it, I think, in a speech. Then we had a revised Estimate in June, 1920, of this very tentative Estimate issued six months earlier. That revised Estimate was based on precisely the same assumption as the earlier one, and the House will remember that there was substituted for the figure of £808,000,000 the figure of £1,029,000,000. I venture to recall to the remembrance of the House those two Estimates with a difference of £200,000,000 between them. I prefer the earlier one of £808,000,000, but I wish to say very emphatically, and, of course, I am speaking only for myself, in my opinion, the real point of importance and the principle which I hope the House tonight will affirm is that, whatever may be the sum, we should have a specific sum. Speaking for myself, I am not particularly wedded to the sum actually mentioned in the Resolution. In other Resolutions other sums are mentioned, and they may be nearer to the mark, but the essential point is that the House should give the Treasury a specific line to work to, and that the business community outside the House should know what that line is and should lay their plans accordingly. What really is alarming, and, I venture to say, paralysing, the whole business community to-day is the uncertainty of the immediate future. They see the Chancellor of the exchequer, with all the expert advice and knowledge at his command, in October, 1919, putting his figure at £808,000,000, and they see him six months later putting the figure at over £1,000,000,000. What will the figure be in April, 1921? They want some security and some certainty.

How are we to get the reduction recommended in our resolution? There are two schools among the critics of swollen Estimates. There are those who say that economies must be effected in detail by the saving of a shilling here and a sixpence there. On the other hand, there are those who say, with my right hon. Friend who moved, that nothing can be done unless you are prepared to reduce the big items of expenditure, and that this attacking of the big items is not a departmental matter, that it is not even a Treasury matter, that it is not even a Cabinet matter, and that it can only be done, and I believe it can only be done, by a deliberate policy sanctioned and sustained by the House of Commons. I believe at the present juncture both those schools are right. I believe also that the first course will prove insufficient for our necessities, not that I am disposed to under-rate what are called petty economies. I remember very well, and I have often recalled, the words of Mr. Gladstone, which were spoken on this matter, appropriately enough to a Scottish audience. He said: The Chancellor of the Exchequer should boldly uphold economy in detail. It is a mark of a chicken-hearted Chancellor when he shrinks from upholding economy in detail. He is ridiculed, no doubt, for what is called candle ends and cheese parings, but lie is not worth his salt if he is not ready to save candle ends and cheese parings in the cause of economy. I think there has been too little regard to candle ends and cheese parings in public Departments during the last few years. It so happens that it has been my business to scrutinise very closely and continuously the expenditure of our public Departments, and I think, and I state my conviction deliberately, that there has been a great deal too little regard paid to these candle ends and cheese parings. For example, it seems to me the scale of war bonuses at present being paid is ridiculously and extravagantly high. Boys of 16 to 17 who go into the Civil Service at what I should regard at an adequate salary of £60 per year are receiving a war bonus of £93 per year, or a total of £153. Young men of 18 and IP who go in with the salary of £100 are receiving a war bonus of £148, a total of £248. I do not know whether the House saw the other day a letter from an old friend of mine, now chairman of one of the most important insurance companies in London, in which he pointed out that no bank and no insurance company would offer salaries to boys and girls and youths on that sort of scale. If they do not do so, why should the Civil Service? Then another point is the travelling and subsistence allowance. It is a point which I am always inquiring into in Departments It is not a very large item, but it is one of those candle ends. I understand that the rule of the Civil Service is that first-class fare shall be paid to anyone whose salary is or will vise to £600 per year. I put it to the House, is there anybody else with a salary of £600 per year who travels about the country first-class? I say these sort of allowances for travelling and subsistence are on a scale unreasonably generous. But it is my deliberate conviction after four years' pretty hard work in the detailed investigation of departmental expenditure that many of the charges which we see brought against public Departments are not warranted, and particularly not warranted as regards the older Departments of the State where the older and better Civil Service traditions survive. It is the new Departments which are in a new and less enviable category.

I have, however, arrived at the conclusion that whatever you do about these petty economies, which are not to be despised, they will not suffice and that you have got to attack not merely current expenditure, but the whole basis of expenditure. The great weakness of the Select Committee on national expenditure has been that over and over again we are brought up not against expenditure, but against policy into which we are not entitled to inquire. But what we cannot do and what we are not permitted to do this House can do and I submit this House ought to do. I fear I have already strained the patience of the House, but I do desire to ask the House to give their very grave consideration to this Motion before they decide to reject it. During these last two years we have been talking a great deal and we have been doing something with regard to what is called social reconstruction. I believe that the conviction is very fast forcing itself on most thoughtful people that in this matter of reconstruction we began at the wrong end, and that the basic foundation of all genuine reconstruction must be financial recuperation. You cannot have financial recuperation without very strict curtailment of public expenditure, but it seems to me that general professions, either on the part of individuals or on the part of this House in the cause of economy, are of very little use. Let me take one concrete illustration and I select it for a reason which I think the House will- appreciate, and partly in consequence of an interruption from an hon. Member, I believe the situation at which we have arrived is so incomparably grave that we have all got to be prepared to postpone the achievement of the objects for which we care most. I compare the very tentative Estimate of October, 1919, with the revised and still tentative Estimate, of June, 1920, and what is the largest single item of increased expenditure revealed by those two Papers. It is the cost of education which in the first Paper is put down at £47,800,000 (it cost about £19,000,000 before the War) and in the second Paper is put down at what I can only describe as the colossal sum of £73,000,000. Members of the last Parliament will, I think, remember that there was no private Member in the House who did more to facilitate the passage of the Bill of 1918, I venture to claim, than I did myself. I believed in the Act of 1918 and I believe in it still and I hope to see it carried out in its fullest implications, but I am so convinced of the gravity of our financial situation to-day that I say, and say deliberately, that the more elaborate provisions of that Act ought to be not abandoned, but postponed, for a period of years, at any rate, until we have reached financial equilibrium.

I am fortified in this opinion by a remarkable pamphlet by one whose opinion on matters of education will not be questioned—Mr. Sydney Webb. He was estimating whether we could pay our way after the War and he said in effect that there was one thing in which we could not economise, that was education, but he put the total cost of education at a sum of £50,000,000 which is £23,000,000 below the figure estimated for the future normal year by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Much as I believe in the social value of education, I do not think that we can afford to spend a sum like that in our present financial position. The house will agree that I, at any rate, cannot personally give a stronger proof of my sincerity and earnestness on this question of national economy than by my selection of this particular item. But what I am prepared to do in the matter of education I expect that other hon. Members will do in other items of policy or reconstruction in which they may be interested and I commend to their favourable consideration the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labour. I hope earnestly that the House will assent to the Motion proposed by my right hon. Friend, and I hope further that the Government will not resist it, or if not this particular Motion then some amended Motion which will not be confined to pious hopes and evaporate in vague generalities but will really give to the harassed producer and the long-suffering consumer some definite and conclusive sign that at last in this matter of immediate and insistent importance this House is in real and deadly earnest.