§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
§ Mr. PETHICK-LAWRENCEI should like to ask the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what is the exact position with regard to Sub-section (2) of this Clause?
§ Major ELLIOTThe main purpose of this Clause is to provide for the modifications of the Sinking Fund including those which are necessary to deal with the Hoover Plan. As the hon. Gentleman knows, under the Hoover Plan we are to pay less money to the United States, and, correspondingly, we receive less money from Reparations and Allied Debts; and, unless this modification were made here, it would not be possible for us to "let up," if T may use that expression, that is to say, to modify the Debt charge in respect of our payments to the United States, and we should therefore be in the difficult position of receiving no money at all in the way of Reparations or Allied War Debts and still having to apply to Sinking Fund the amount saved on our payments to the United States. That, obviously, would be inadvisable, and therefore we have taken power to modify it in this Sub-section.
§ Mr. PETHICK-LAWRENCESurely, that is not a complete answer to my 618 question, which related to the whole of Sub-section (2)? The hon. and gallant Gentleman has only dealt with paragraph (a). I should like to know the position with regard to paragraph (b) also.
§ Major ELLIOTI thought that the hon. Gentleman was referring more particularly to paragraph (a). We have also, as he knows, to deal with Victory Bonds and Funding Loan which are accepted by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in payment of Death Duties. As the hon. Gentleman will remember, the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained in his Budget Speech that he was only providing, for the statutory Sinking Fund, £32,500,00. A proportion of these Bonds are surrendered in payment of Death Duties, and these are not going to be brought by the Sinking Fund, but will be reborrowed. It is in respect of that operation that this paragraph applies.