§ The Committee will wish, no doubt, to have some information upon the Debt. On 31st March of this year the Nominal Deadweight Debt was £7,616,000,000, having been reduced in the course of the year by £30,000,000. The Blue Paper, in Table IV, gives particulars which show that the External Debt has been reduced by £11,000,000 to a, total of £1,110,750,000. The reduction in the External Debt is due, partly, to capital repayments to the United States, and partly to the repatriation of nearly £6,000,000 worth of British dollar bonds in the United States market through their being converted into sterling National War Bonds. As for the Internal Debt, the Floating portion of it was reduced last year by almost exactly £38,000,000, partly by conversions and partly by the sale of Treasury Bonds and National Savings Certificates. The total Floating Debt on the 31st March stood at £704,250,000, of which £564,750,000 were represented by Treasury Bills. This figure of £704,250,000 on 31st March compares with a total of £1,412,000,000 on the same date in 1919. In seven years, therefore, the Floating Debt has been reduced by over 1692 £700,000,000 has, in fact, been actually halved.
§ That is a remarkable achievement. Six years ago, when our Annual Debt. Interest Charge reached its maximum—I take six years, and not seven, because the peak was not reached till a year after the War—that charge, excluding the liability to the United States, amounted to £325,500,000. Last year the charge was £278,500,000, a reduction in annual interest of £47,000,000. But that does not allow for the fact that six years ago our debt to the United States was accumulating unfunded at a rate of over £56,000,000 a year, whereas, apart from Sinking Fund, we now pay in interest £28,000,000 a year Thus the total diminution of the National Debt Charge during these six years has been effectively £75,000,000 a year, or about one-fifth of the whole original expense. These figures are, perhaps, some return for the immense efforts which have been consistently made by all parties and all Governments, and surveying them, and repeating them, I can only say, "Let us persevere.
§ All the thrift agencies of the people have continued to prosper in the past year. The Post Office Savings Bank, the Trustee Savings Banks, the Friendly Societies, have all increased their deposits or their funds. Above all, the sales of Savings Certificates in the tenth year of their existence, for they are celebrating their tenth year at the present time, have grown impressively. The receipts from Savings Certificates, £35,500,000, overtop the withdrawals, £28,750,000, and give a net increase of £6,750,000, or more than double the increase last year. This system of popular investment is taking deep root. We owe much to the voluntary and unpaid workers who have made the popularisation of this scheme their central effort in social service, and in particular to Lord Islington, who after six years arduous work is about to relinquish the chairmanship of the National Savings Committee. There are certain arrangements for the renewal of War Savings Certificates of the first series, which are now beginning to reach maturity, which require a Clause in the Finance Bill. The arrangements are technical. They are favourable to the holders. They will be found set forth in detail in the White 1693 Paper which will be available when I sit clown, and I do not complicate my remarks by attempting to explain them to the Committee.