I intend to explain that. It was due to the difficulties of physical supply.

I was glad that the right hon. Gentleman told us a secret yesterday about the forthcoming Tory election manifesto. Perhaps I may also tell a secret. The very first thing that the present Chancellor and I did when we returned to the Treasury after the General Election in March, 1950, was to apply this policy of relaxation to the purchase of North American softwood. That relaxation was progressively extended over the spring and summer months of 1950. In the very early weeks of the Korean War we went further, and decided to embark on strategic stockpiling. I do not think it will be suggested that we could have actually foreseen the Korean war before it started. We took action in the Treasury early in July, and the Government's decision to stockpile strategic materials was taken in mid-July last year, actually just five weeks before the admirable letter to "The Times" by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ormskirk (Sir A. Salter), who, on personal grounds I am very glad to welcome to the House, in which he recommended the same policy. I derived much comfort from his letter in "The Times" because he endorsed the policy which we were already pursuing.

It is nothing but physical shortages both in respect of dollar imports and non-dollar imports which have limited our efforts to stockpile and to buy imports of raw materials since then. That record would be open to criticism only if it were seriously argued that all restraints on dollar grounds should have been removed, and that raw materials should have been purchased more freely as early as December, 1949, or January or February, 1950. But, as the right hon. Member for Alder-shot quite rightly admitted yesterday, that was a time when exporters were finding markets difficult, and the economic prospect was generally regarded as being one of recession and falling prices rather than inflation. Indeed, this criticism comes rather oddly from the Opposition for they were, at that very time, in the winter of 1949–50, not prophesying a dollar surplus, but were warning us of a further dollar crisis. I remember that it was in the last week of October, 1949, that the Deputy-Leader of the Opposition told us in this House that another dollar crisis was not many months away.

Although there was so much unexpected harmony in the Committee yesterday, I gathered that the main thread of argument in speeches of Opposition Members was to the effect that Government expenditure ought to be reduced still further. The right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery said he regretted that the Chancellor had not said more about efforts to cut down expenditure. I will, if I may, respond to that invitation. It is apparently still suggested that large and unspecified economies could be made without harming anybody or sacrificing anything. Quite naturally, it is said that out of a total of £4,197 million some large sum could clearly be saved. That, of course, could be said with as much emphasis and perhaps as little thought, whatever the figure was.