Debate on the Address

Part of Orders of the Day — King's Speech – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 September 1948.

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Photo of Mr John Boyd-Carpenter Mr John Boyd-Carpenter , Kingston upon Thames 12:00, 16 September 1948

It is one of the remarkable illustrations of the mentality of the hon. Member for West Fife that he believes that what has once been said by a Conservative, referring to a distant period, must be true to the end of time. I am not so strong a party man as is the hon. Member. I believe that the doctrine he has mentioned, which was sound in its time, is passing and that its passing should be accelerated by people of good will.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a superb exhibition of his matchless power of exposition. I feel also that. with the defects as well as the qualities of a great advocate, he inevitably gave to that exposition of undoubted fact a twist which results in the picture not being quite in focus. To my mind he gave an excessively favourable impression, even though he did nothing but cite ascertained and ascertainable facts.

In the first place his references to the success in which we all rejoice of the British exporting industries, passed without a single reference to the fact that those exporting industries are almost exclusively conducted on those principles of private enterprise which it is the declared intention of His Majesty's Government to limit and to reduce. There was no reference whatever to the part played directly or indirectly in that success by the most successful of all industrial private enterprises, the steel industry. There was no reference to the sinister rise in British prices, to which I was glad to hear the hon. Member for Norwood refer. There was no reference to the fact that in certain markets of the world British goods are already difficult to sell, because of their prices, or to the fact that the basic fuel necessities of industrial production, whether in the form of coal, electricity or gas, are being raised in price. There was no reference to the rising cost of living with all its inevitable repercussions on the cost of industrial production.

There seems to be an assumption that because exports have grown, and grown magnificently, in recent months that that process can be counted upon to continue. I do not believe that it can continue while our prices creep steadily upwards. I believe that our prices must creep steadily upwards while the whole internal inflationary policy of the present Government continues on the present lines; and while the cost of production of every article exported is growing and will increase, because the State monopolies in fuel and power are increasing their prices to those industries and thereby adding one item to the cost of production of every article exported abroad.

No reference was made to the fact that there must inevitably be an economic repercussion from the military steps to which the Lord President of the Council referred on Tuesday. The mere holding back of a number of men and women, a necessary and indeed a belated step, means, none the less, increased manpower difficulties for British industry. So equally inevitably must the application of more manpower and effort to war production have the same effect. The emphasis to which he referred on the production of fighter aircraft must have some effect. We had no reference whatever to that in the speech, nor did we have any reference whatever to the possibility of this increasing policy of nationalisation affecting this matter.

However, we did have one curious remark. We had the remark that the surplus in our trade relations with the sterling area was particularly satisfactory, because it reflects the pattern of our pre-war trade. It certainly does. It reflects the pattern of our private enterprise, virtually non-Government controlled pre-war trade. Does this apparent nostalgia in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech indicate that he is at last realising that it was upon this foundation of free enterprise that our prosperity and our industrial hegemony was built? If it does, then that remark, otherwise inexplicable, in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, is an indication of great importance. If it indicates that he is beginning to realise that we shall not recover either the pattern of our pre-war trade or our pre-war standard of living without a complete reversal of the internal financial policy of the present Government, it is a point of great significance.