§ SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)To ask the Postmaster-General, if the Returns furnished to him by the post offices of the United States, France, and Germany, enable him to give the House any means of comparing the savings of the working classes in those 1172 countries in savings banks with the savings of the working men of the United Kingdom in the Post Office Savings Bank; and, if not, if he can obtain this information through the Foreign Office or otherwise.
(Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) There are no savings banks in connection with the post offices of the United States or Germany, and the conditions of the post office savings banks in France and the United Kingdom are so different that any comparison would be worthless. For example, no one may have an account of more than £60 in the French bank, whereas the limit in this country is £200. On the 31st December, 1901, there were 3,806,000 depositors in the French Post Office Savings Bank, and the amount to their credit was £43,215,600. On the same date there were 8,788,000 depositors in the British Post Office Savings Bank, and the amount to their credit was £140,393,000.