§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain)With these few preliminary observations on a subject to which I must, I think, return in the course of my speech, I turn at once to the expenditure of last year. By a happy custom now formally adopted, the figures are already in the hands of Members, and I need trouble them with but very few. The expenditure—Exchequer issues—for the year which has just been completed was less than the estimate of £2,972,000,000 by £393,000,000. The estimate of daily average expenditure was £8,143,000, and the actual expenditure was £7,067,000. I think it would be of interest to the Committee to divide the year into the period before the Armistice and the period since the Armistice was signed, and to see what the average expenditure was in each of those two periods. In the earlier period, from the 1st April to the 9th November, it was £7,443,000; in the latter period, from the 10th November to the 31st March, it was £6,476,000—that is, a reduction of £1,667,000 per day on the Budget Estimate, or, in other words, a reduction of 20 per cent. Let me add that that reduction would have been still greater but for special expenditure consequent on and the result of demobilisation. For instance, £52,000,000 was spent on gratuities to members of the forces who were demobilised; and unemployment, a charge arising out of demobilisation, has cost £13,000,000. There has been a saving on the year in the Debt Charge compared with the estimate of £45,000,000.