Expenditure Arising Out of the War.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. – in the House of Commons at on 10 March 1942.

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Photo of Mr Richard Stokes Mr Richard Stokes , Ipswich

I wish to point out that the Government are conducting the war inefficiently. If I am required to support a Vote of Credit of £1,000,000,000, I am entitled to suggest where their methods should be improved. If I am not entitled to discuss that, I do not know what I am entitled to discuss. I am only criticising the dead hand of the Treasury, which I fear is still all too persistent.

I turn to the question of waste. A deputation of competent workmen came to see me the other day about the construction of an aerodrome. Their attitude was one of intense indignation, because it had been put in the public Press that men on the job were playing cards. It happens to be true that they were playing cards. I want to tell the Chancellor why. Their complaint was that the Air Ministry would not make up their minds where they wanted various things up and down the aerodrome. Things were constantly being interrupted, pulled down and put up again. On top of that during the recent hard period, when most of the work to be done was digging, about 300 or 400 people were taken from the town to the site by motor buses. They could not dig, so they played cards. In the evening they came back again. Is the Chacellor aware that spending Departments are spending money in that way? How he expects War Weapons Weeks to be a success when people realise all the waste which is going on I fail to understand. I know that it is not a matter which we can discuss in detail to-day; but if the Chancellor wants the right sort of effort put into the war, he must consider the incidence on all these people of Income Tax.

Those people who came to me with the grievance to which I have referred said to me, "Last summer, in the long days, we were working for long hours, and earning a lot of money. Now we are on short time, because the weather is bad; but this is the period when we are required to pay heavy Income Tax." I suggest that the incidence of Income Tax should be changed, so that it shall be paid out of current earnings. I hope that the Chancellor will consider that matter in connection with the forthcoming Budget. We have heard a great deal about equality of sacrifice and the necessity for everybody to pull his weight, to save every possible penny, and to consume as few goods as possible. I suggest that the Government have not done anything like enough in giving a lead. There is nothing imaginative in the policy they adopt. I will read a suggestion from a letter which I happened to write, and which the "Manchester Guardian" happened to publish, in 1937, long before I thought of trying to join this august Assembly. Discussing the possibility of war, I wrote: As, presumably, the young men of the country will be invited to risk their lives, in return for a purely nominal monetary reward, no doubt the Government will also conscript all labour, irrespective of class, to work in the common good, from the Governor of the Bank of England downwards, in return for a purely nominal wage.