Board of Trade.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. – in the House of Commons at on 19 June 1924.

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Photo of Mr Sidney Webb Mr Sidney Webb , Seaham

Some prophets do not express their views in the form of prophecies. They sometimes get others to express them. With regard to the present position of British trade I am not going to attempt any general survey. It is very difficult to draw any new valid inference unless one is careful to take a long period of statistics and to look at them as a whole. I do not want to take up the time of the Committee with that kind of thing, but I should like to point out that to-day the figures are considerably more promising than they were at this time last year. I will only take, as an example of that, the very remarkable figures of the import and export trade during the month of May. I do not want to base too much on the figures for that month. Still, they are very remarkable. They show a somewhat gradual improvement on the figures for the preceding three months, and therefore they are not quite so exceptional or perhaps so misleading as one might imagine. The average monthly total of imports during the year 1923 was, in round figures, £91,000,000. During May the total rose to £122,000,000, a perfectly wonderful increase on the average of last year. The exports show an average of £64,000,000 for the same year. During May they went up to £70,000,000. Thus the import and export trade during the last month was very much greater than in any previous month right back to 1920, the year of the boom. Roughly speaking, apparently, in volume the imports for May were greater than those for any month since 1920.

What warrants me in quoting these remarkable figures is that this increase of imports is largely an increase of imports of raw material—of raw cotton, raw wool, oil seeds, hides and skins. I know some people have suspicions whether rises in the imports of raw material are to the good. I think it is very significant, and so far as we can draw any inference it is quite a hopeful sign that we should have such a large increase of imports as has taken place in the principal raw materials on which our commerce depends. The exports also show a large increase as compared with right back to 1920. The only months in which there was a larger aggregate of British exports were the months of May and October last year, and, although prices have gone down, the exports are considerably greater than at any time in the last two years. I do not want to draw too much optimism from that. Indeed, if I had to say what the general condition of trade is I should state that it is quiet; all over the world the policy is to buy only from hand to mouth. This may prevent the accumulation of stocks; it may constitute a sound basis for future trade; but it does tend to make trade dull while it lasts. Our trade is in the same situation as the trade of the rest of the world. The exports in May represent mainly the fulfilment of orders for manufactured goods placed earlier in the year. I am not going to predict what the June figures will show and whether they will produce a corresponding increase, but the unusually large imports of raw materials for May and the corresponding large imports of food supplies do seem to suggest that we are at the beginning of an upward tendency. I do not want to exaggerate it, but I feel that there is reasonable ground of hope for the future.