§ I am afraid that after these spacious figures, running into hundreds of millions, the Committee will be ill-inclined to follow with much interest the modest savings we have been able to effect in the course of last year and in the lifetime of this Parliament. Nevertheless, in presenting the public balance-sheet it is my duty to draw attention to them. Our greatest economy in this Parliament has been upon armaments. The Navy, the Army, the Air Force, including the Middle East, which was not included in the military Estimates for 1924, have yielded savings of over £7,500,000 compared with the year of the Labour Government. The Navy had a specially difficult task because the Labour Government, quite rightly in my opinion, laid down five cruisers, which cost Lord Chelmsford's Estimates only £1,500,000, but cost the Estimates of my right hon. Friend the present First Lord nearly £10,000,000. I certainly expected, and I stated so four years ago, a figure for Navy Estimates substantially larger than we have now, and I think that great credit is due to the First Lord of the Admiralty and to the Board of Admiralty for the way in which they have managed to provide for the heavy cost of an increase in the new construction vote, not only without appreciable addition to the Socialist Estimates, but, if you take the increase of the non-effective charges and the transference of the Fleet air arm from Air to Navy Votes into consideration, with an actual diminution of £1,750,000 a year. This represents five years of careful and resolute work which is naturally much against the grain to naval men. But I admire them for the persistency with which they have carried it out.
§ The Army has been administered by the Secretary of State for War with progressive and increasing frugality. Every single year he has effected further reductions. When he first went to the War Office, in 1921, the Estimates, in the dying momentum of the War, were 32 £80,000,000. When, at the beginning of this Parliament, he went there they were £45,000,000. They are now £40,500,000, and the later diminution has been achieved, not only without loss of efficiency, but in spite of the serious necessary new expenditure on what is called mechanisation.
§ It was, and I believe it still is, common ground that the Air Force should be expanded into some reasonable defensive relation with those of our Continental neighbours, and programmes were approved six years ago which would have carried the expense of the Air Force in the ordinary course to £21,000,000 this year. The actual expenditure is £16,000,000. It is mainly through the agency of the Air Force and the thrifty genius of Sir Hugh Trenchard that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air has been able to bring the cost of the Middle East, which before the Cairo Conference of 1921 was £44,500,000 a year, down to just over £500,000 a year at the present time, and to effect a reduction, within the lifetime of the present Parliament, of £4,250,000 a year. In all, the reductions made by the present Government under these four heads—that is, the three fighting services and the Middle East—aggregate over £7,500,000 a year. I hope the Committee will excuse me for mentioning such a trifle, in view of the megalomaniac projects of expenditure which we are told are now so popular.
§ I turn to the Civil Supply Services. The steady growth of expenditure on the Civil Supply Services existing in 1924, notably housing, health and education, has added £11,500,000 to the public burdens. Old Age Pensions, partly as a result of our legislation and partly by the automatic growth occurring as the result of previous legislation, have increased by £10,500,000. In addition, we are providing in the present year for several services which were not ill existence in 1924—Widows' Pensions, beet sugar, schemes for the training of transference of unemployed, additional expenditure on agriculture—amounting in all to £8,500,000, or a total increase of Civil Supply Expenditure from all these causes of £30,500,000. This increase has been partly offset by automatic reductions, chiefly in War pensions through the dying-off of War pensioners and the re- 33 marriage of War widows. This offset amounts to £18,500,000, leaving a net increase of £12,000,000. But I ask the Committee to note—and I ask them to give due credit to this achievement—that by savings elsewhere, year by year and month by month, effected in small sums over wide areas and prolonged periods, His Majesty's Government have been able to show, instead of an increase of £12,000,000 as compared with 1924, an actual decrease on Civil Supply of £5,500,000. It has been able to show that decrease for services which are appreciably larger, more comprehensive, more varied and rendered to a population which is greater by nearly 1,000,000 souls.
In the year just closed I have been able to repeat the salutary process which I started three years ago of a second scrutiny of the spending Departments after the Estimates have been approved by the Cabinet and by Parliament. I took no money in the last Budget for the extra troops in China. I have had to face £3,500,000 worth of Supplementary Estimates—acceleration of the freight relief, £1,000,000; extra Old Age Pensions, £559,000; transference and training of unemployed, £460,000; contribution to the Lord Mayor's Fund, £857,000, and that act of generosity towards the sufferers from Irish injuries on which the House resolved, £385,000, or a total of £3,600,000 odd. But, notwithstanding all this, the actual expenditure on Supply Services is less than the original Budget provision by £2,600,000, entirely through economies of over £6,000,000 effected during the year, by day by day administration, after the Estimates had been passed.
§ Before leaving this question of economy, may I say that, in my judgment, there is no room for large cuts in the social services. Large cuts in armaments are dependent upon international agreements which, I fear, will not be as easy to reach as we would all hope, and, even so, we are limited by the absolute requirements of the safety of this island and of the community of the British Empire. A process of continued refinement and reduction can and should and must go on, but we cannot break up our social services around which the life of the people has so largely been built. We cannot make any large reductions in 34 the Navy without falling below the one-Power standard, which, in my opinion, would be a fatal decision, or without jeopardising our food and trade routes. We cannot further reduce the police force which we call our Army without failing to retain the Cardwell system of linked battalions upon which depends the whole economy of the garrisons which we have to keep in India and elsewhere overseas. We cannot arrest the development of the Air Force without placing ourselves largely at the mercy of that very neighbour, for subservience towards whom we are repeatedly reproached, and whom the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs is never too busy to offend.