THE MINT. (Hansard, 7 December 1922)

§ Mr. BALDWIN
I expect the Committee will desire some explanation of this Vote. As hon. Members know, the 2185 Mint generally brings a profit to the Exchequer. Before the War the average profit of the Mint was about £800,000. Over the War period there was an exceptionally large coinage of silver, the demand for that coin being enormous owing to the transactions that took place in this country. Since the War there has been a considerable contraction. There is still to-day a large amount of surplus coinage. Steps have had to be taken to withdraw the surplus coinage from circulation because it was merely lying in the coffers of the banks: it locked up capital and prevented it being employed for the purposes of trade. Similarly, the issue of new silver coinage has also been curtailed. The amount of coinage issued depends on the demand, and the demand at present is considerably less than was anticipated: in fact the estimate of the amount required this year has not been re-ached. These are the reasons for the presentation of this Supplementary estimate which I ask the Committee to pass.

§ Sir CHARLES OMAN
I want to call the attention of the Committee to the causes of this trouble. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. When the Coinage Bill was introduced in 1920 I begged and prayed the then Chancellor of the Exchequer not to flood the kingdom with this debased money. But he laughed me to scorn. He said it was necessary to go on producing enormous quantities of money, and he did it. His unfortunate successor has now to take the coinage back. And what is it he has to call in? Coins on which the King's head occasionally comes off; coins on which the shield on the reverse side comes off; coins of a bad colour. Those of the last issue turn a pale saffron hue. I am not blaming the Chancellor of the Exchequer for that. It is his predecessor but one who is to blame. That right hon. Gentleman started this abominable currency for which no parallel can be found in the history of this country except in the coinage of Henry VIII., when six-pennyworth of base metal was worked into every silver shilling. Ear be it for me to draw any comparison between the Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible for this coinage and that bluff Tudor monarch, but they both have one thing in common: they both for a short space of years reduced the English coinage to a disgraceful condition which could not be paralleled from Peru to Abyssinia. Now 2186 that no more silver is apparently wanted, it is in the power of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer to redeem this silver coinage, which is such a disgrace to English coinage, which for centuries from the days of King Alfred onwards has, with two exceptions, retained its purity. Again following what was done in the days of Henry VIII. it is necessary to withdraw this abominable, disreputable black-spotted money which was issued in 1920–21. I confess I have always been afraid there was a chance of making a few dishonest millions out of this coinage. Perhaps I am wrong, but everybody interested in coinage knows that when silver is only 32d. per oz., or when it is well up in the fifties, it can be coined with considerable profit to the Crown. I want my right hon. Friend to free us from this dreadful encumbrance of the 1920–21 coinage. I sent him for his private delectation some of the choicer specimens of this issue which had come into my hands from the bank. The right hon. Gentleman well knows what it is like, and I beg him, in the interests of common decency, to remove this awful disgrace from Great Britain.

§ Mr. GERSHOM STEWART
I should like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a little more information, because it is a fact that during the War we had 66 million pounds face value of silver coinage, which represented 500 million ounces of silver, and it is very difficult to understand why there should be a loss on our depreciated coinage at the present moment. The debasement of coins with a face value of anything like £66,000,000 to 500 fine, in lieu of 925 fine, must have supplied the Mint with a quantity of free silver to dispose of. I do not know that I go the whole distance with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University (Sir Charles Oman), but I do think that the coinage is no credit to us. It appears to me that we have depreciated our coinage, and our credit and we have lost money in doing so. As it has not been successful I think we should go back to the coinage to which we have been accustomed.