§ 49. Lieut.-Colonel HOWARD - BURYasked the Prime Minister whether the sum total of the amounts that are required by His Majesty's Government to be paid by Germany for reparations to this country and by the Allied debtor countries in respect of their debts is the equivalent of the amount that must be paid to the United States; and will he give an assurance that this is the extreme limit of our sacrifices, and that it will be absolutely impossible to accept any further reductions?
§ The PRIME MINISTERAs I stated on the Third Reading of the Finance Bill last Wednesday, the offer we made in January was not accepted, and our hands 922 are perfectly free to deal with Allied debts. I certainly could not contemplate a position in which all sacrifices involved in any settlement were made at the expense of the British taxpayer.