Ways and Means

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 26 April 1944.

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Photo of Lieut-Commander Joseph Braithwaite Lieut-Commander Joseph Braithwaite , Holderness

I am not here in this Committee to discuss my appearance or my bank balance, and I do not think I am saying anything untrue when I suggest that there are thousands of small taxpayers wishing to know when this post-war credit is going to be paid. It may be that they are simply planning to go away for a holiday, but many are making plans on the assumption that it is going to be paid. How are the Government going to make this payment? Are they going to make it by increasing the fiduciary issue—for this is a point with which the hon. Member opposite may agree? Surely, there will have to be a great campaign to persuade the public to invest this money if possible, either in Government securities or in the many new issues of industrial capital, which will then be necessary to the tune of many millions, to finance trade recovery and expansion. It will certainly be an embarrassing moment for the Chancellor of the Exchequer if everybody wants to cash in at the moment that the post-war credit becomes available for release. After the war we shall have to return to Budgets which balance, at least approximately, or enter a period of inflation, to which reference has been made by almost every hon. Member who has gone before me to-day, and which must damage national credit and reduce the purchasing value of wages, not to mention the savings of the people. The Chancellor has, rightly, determined to avoid this, and has said so in the plainest possible language. May I quote something which the right hon. Gentleman said in this House as recently as 6th April? He was asked by the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Sir W. Smithers): Will the Government, so far as it lies in their power, give an undertaking that the purchasing power of the pound sterling to be drawn out, will be the same as that of the pound sterling which these loyal people lent to the Government? The reply of the Chancellor reads: I have made it quite clear in a public statement and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has done the same that the maintenance of the value of these subscriptions will be a paramount object of policy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th April, 1944; col. 2160, Vol. 398.] That is clear enough, and obviously the policy of the Government must be to try to maintain the value of our money as far as they possibly can. But we have also had the less happy declaration of the Secretary of State for War. I gave the right hon. Gentleman notice that I was going to raise the matter, but I do not complain of his absence as I realise that he has plenty to do. It is in his speech when he replied, on 2nd March, to the Debate on Service pay and allowances. The right hon. Gentleman said: I have made some rough calculations of the cost of the proposal of the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Kendall)."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd March, 1944: col. 1723, Vol. 397.] Hon. Members will remember that it was for 5s. basic rate and 5s. for a wife—