CLAUSE 1.—(Amendment of s. 24 (4) of 22 & 23 Geo. 5. c. 25.) (Hansard, 10 May 1933)

§ Mr. DAVID MASON
I have a manuscript Amendment which proposes, in page 1, line 6, at the beginning, to insert the words: Subject to the Comptroller and Auditor-General having reported to Parliament on the thirtieth day of September of each year regarding the administration of the fund, and having presented a statement giving a valuation of the fund as on the thirty-first day of March preceding, and having stated the sterling value of the assets (a) in gold, (b) in foreign currencies, and (c) in sterling.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I called upon the hon. Member by mistake. I thought he was moving another Amendment. The manuscript Amendment to which his name is attached is out of order.

§ Mr. MASON
The Amendment which I hoped to have the pleasure of moving represents a view held by many hon. Members. May I ask why you rule it out of order? It is an Amendment asking whether we cannot have a report or a valuation before we vote this large sum of money.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member is now arguing, apparently, in favour of his Amendment, which is definitely out of order.

§ Mr. MASON
I would ask you, Mr. Chairman, whether it is possible, within the limits of this Bill, to move such an Amendment, or—

§ The CHAIRMAN
No, it is not.

§ Mr. MASON
If this Bill is based on the—

§ The CHAIRMAN
Mr. Mabane.

§ Mr. MASON
I beg to move, in page I, line 11, to leave out the words "three hundred and fifty," and to insert instead thereof the words "two hundred."
I have been asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) to move this Amendment on his behalf. It is very difficult in a very narrow Bill such as this to move any Amendment. It is an extraordinarily narrow Bill, and the only possible Amendment appeared to be one for a reduction of the amount, and that I propose. I am entirely opposed to this Equalisation Fund. If we can get a reduction, a less amount is better than the larger amount. I am seeking to minimise the evil of the Account. The Bill represents an unsound principle. You may as well have some mechanism for regulating a weather glass as mechanism for regulating exchanges. Exchanges indicate the state of your trade, and it is idle to ask any responsible body to vote a large sum of money to regulate the exchanges. If we vote a large sum of money for interfering with the exchanges we mislead traders and contract our trading. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is attempting an impossible task. It is really a serious matter to vote an additional £200,000,000 for this purpose.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the purpose was to check the fluctuations of exchange. The fluctuation of exchanges is not something which you can check or control. Exchanges fluctuate as the result of the ebb and flow of trade between countries; every trader wishes to know the state of the exchanges and to interfere with them will not facilitate trade but will retard it. To ask us to vote this sum blindly is a retrograde step. When this Measure was originally introduced, its ostensible purpose was to strengthen our currency—

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member is now discussing the principle of the Bill. He must confine his speech to the Amendment which simply proposes a reduction of the amount.

§ Mr. MASON
I am endeavouring to give reasons why I move the reduction of the amount and to persuade the Committee that we should not vote this large 1670 sum. If I can show that the principle of the Bill for which this sum of money is asked, is unsound, I hope that will come within your Ruling.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Certainly not. The time for the hon. Member to do that would be either on the Clause, or on the Third Reading of the Bill, but not on this Amendment.

§ Mr. MASON
I shall endeavour to keep within your Ruling. My object is to reduce this amount in order to reduce the mischief which the Bill may do to as small a compass as possible, and to lessen the evil. I am very much confined as to the arguments which I can submit but I do not believe the Committee appreciate the danger involved in this proposal. In the whole history of Parliament I do not think there is any precedent for voting a blank cheque of this character. We are asked to vote £350,000,000 for the purpose of checking fluctuations in exchange and I hope the Committee wiill hesitate before acceding to such a request.

§ Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMS
I wish to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer about one point which has not yet been explained. The Chancellor of the Exchequer earlier in. the Debate on this, matter referred to the fact that there had been no loss on this fund during the past year. Some day this fund will have to be wound up, and when that day comes, in the event of a loss, presumably the taxpayer will have to pay, and in the event of a profit, we shall get some relief from taxation; but I think the House has a right to know if that is the real position. It, is not a small matter of a few millions, but an extraordinarily big thing, and I think we, as the guardians of the money of the taxpayer, have a right to know that on the first possible occasion the fund will be wound up, and that it will not be left for many years in the present position of this House not knowing exactly the state of the money which we are providing under this Bill. Therefore, I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give as an assurance that the fund will be wound up as soon as 1671 possible, and whether the taxpayer has to make good any loss, if there is one, when the fund is wound up.

§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain)
I can answer my hon. Friend in a word. It is, of course, impossible for me to bind my successors or to say what they may do when the fund is wound up, but I can assure him that we do not carry on this fund for amusement, and that as soon as its purpose ceases to be achievable by means of the fund, we shall be very glad to wind it up. With regard to what happens, whether there is a surplus or a loss at the end, that must ultimately inure to the benefit or the disadvantage of the taxpayer.

Captain CROOKSHANK
On a point of Order. Will you be good enough to call the new Clause on the Paper in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Mr. Albery) and myself—(Valuation)?

§ The CHAIRMAN
No. I am not selecting that Clause, for the simple reason that it is out of order.

Captain CROOKSHANK
May I, with all respect, ask if you will be good enough to inform hon. Members why the Clause has been ruled out of order?

§ The CHAIRMAN
It is out of order because the Bill is very strictly confined to the simple fact of the alteration of a sum, a sum which is fixed under statutory authority, the statutory provisions relating to the management of which are not being altered by this particular Bill.

Captain CROOKSHANK
On the point of Order. The purpose of the Bill is to increase to £350,000,000 the aggregate amount, but is the Committee to understand that, in a case where a charge to the public is increased by £200,000,000, it is automatically impossible to fix any conditions whatsoever to that vast increase of public liability, bearing in mind, 1672 if I may put it with all respect, that in the Finance Bill of last year, as introduced, certain conditions were laid down which did not figure in the original Money Resolution, with regard to the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General? If that was done last year, I submit that it is competent for us this year to do the same, particularly in view of the very large increase in the fund.

§ The CHAIRMAN
No. The hon. and gallant Member has failed to realise that on the occasion when the fund was first established it was established by a Finance Act, and on this particular occasion we have passed the question of the establishment of the fund. We are now dealing with a Bill which is strictly limited to the alteration of the amount, and in these circumstances, at this stage at any rate, it is quite impossible to admit a Clause such as that to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman refers. I am not prepared to say at this moment how the hon. Member might have achieved his object if he had raised it on the Financial Resolution, but now that the Bill is before the House any Amendment of that kind is definitely outside the scope of the Bill.

Captain CROOKSHANK
I hesitate to rise again, but it was not moved on the Financial Resolution because we acted on the precedent of last year. The Resolution then said nothing about the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, but it was introduced in the relevant Sub-section of the Finance Act last year. Therefore, acting on that precedent, it was assumed that, though nothing was said on the Financial Resolution with regard to the Comptroller and Auditor-General and no Amendment was moved, it would be competent for us to take the same action as the Government did last year. If we are wrong in our contention, the only fact which emerges is that at any stage of these proceedings it is impossible for either House to put in conditions that it desires to put in.

§ Sir H. SAMUEL
Is it not essentially a reasonable thing that if the House is asked to increase the sum from £150,000,000 to £350,000,000 the House should be at liberty to attach a condition to such a very large increase? While the House might have been prepared last year to grant what was then a considerable amount free from any such con- 1673 ditions, now that the money is to be more than doubled, the House might desire to take further precautions in regard to it.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I will deal with the right hon. Gentleman's point first. I have already indicated what the answer to it is in what I have already said in reply to the hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank). That is, that he is too late in raising it now. The House had an opportunity perhaps of doing it when the Resolution was before it, but the House passed a Resolution which was strictly confined to an increase of the fund. That being so, it gave the Government authority to do what they have done, that is, to introduce a Bill which is strictly confined to increasing the amount, and therefore the Bill cannot include any alteration in the terms of the establishment of the fund. In reply to the point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough, if he will look back at the Budget Resolution of last year in regard to this fund, he will find that it is in a very different form, because it was the Resolution to establish the fund and not to alter the amount of the existing fund.

Captain CROOKSHANK
I have it here. It is true that the Resolution last year did make no reference at all to the Comptroller and Auditor-General. My whole point is that the Government inserted those conditions when the Finance Bill was introduced, but it was not in the Resolution upon which the Finance Bill was founded. We are acting on that precedent to-night. There is nothing in this Financial Resolution on which this Bill was founded in regard to the Auditor-General, and we thought that it was open to us at this appropriate stage to take as private Members the same attitude that the Government took on the Finance Bill last year. In the Resolution of last year there is no mention at all of any question of audit, but that was inserted, and is now on the Statute Book, during the passage of the Finance Bill. I still with all respect ask you whether the conditions in regard to the size of the fund have not changed, and if it is out of order to move such an Amendment, whether it be in order to make some such conditions in the Finance Bill of this year, or will it require another Money Resolution to deal with it and so preclude private Members from raising the matter at all?

§ The CHAIRMAN
With regard to the hon. Member's first point, I must again refer to the difference between last year's Resolution and the present one. Last year's Resolution covered the establishment of the fund. Therefore it covered all the adjuncts necessary for the establishment of the fund. The fund is now one established by Statute, and it is a well-known rule of Procedure that when legislation is introduced for the express and single purpose of altering either the amount included in a fund or the extension of some particular statutory period of time, the Bill, if drawn in that form, must be confined to a at particular object, and cannot otherwise be altered so as to amend other existing statutory provisions. With regard to the hon. Member's question as to what he can do on the Finance Bill, I think that on consideration he will agree that the proper time to raise that will be when the Finance Bill comes before the House.

Captain CROOKSHANK
I am grateful to you, Sir, but what I had hoped to get was your Ruling whether any Clause dealing with the auditing of this account bad to be founded on a Money Resolution or not, because, if it has to be founded on a Money Resolution, it is impossible for us to raise the point. If, however, it is regarded mere as an administrative Amendment to a fund which now exists, it may be possible to raise the question on the Finance Bill. I hope that it may be possible that we can do so. We can do nothing to-night except bow to your Ruling, and I must express my regret that the House at the moment has no control over this fund of £300,000,000.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I hope the hon. Member will not press that point at the moment, because obviously the proper time to raise it will be when the Finance Bill comes before the House, and I should not like:in any way to prejudice his chances by giving any hasty Ruling on the point at the moment.

§ Mr. ALBERY
May I respectfully point out that it might have been convenient for Members of the House in this particular instance to have known that this new Clause would not be called, because some Members, if they had known that no control would be exercised over this fund, might have been inclined to challenge the increase of the fund itself?

§ The CHAIRMAN
I am afraid that the hon. Member cannot really raise any grievance over the fact that an Amendment which was to be moved proves to be out of order. It is not a matter of which notice is given beforehand; there is no machinery or procedure by which that can be done officially.

§ Earl WINTERTON
I wish before the Bill is reported to make an appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Whip. I do not wish to refer, Sir Dennis, to the Ruling you have just given, in fact, I have not the technical knowledge to do so, but it is very obvious that a serious situation has arisen. Though I am a supporter of the Government in this matter, as I think most Members who normally support the Government are, I make an appeal to the Chancellor—I do not ask for an answer now—to consider the serious situation which may arise. It will be possible for some subsequent Government to raise this fund to any amount without the House having any opportunity to ask for certain things to be done which some hon. Members thought would be done to-night. I hope the Government will consider the matter before the Finance Bill is introduced.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Just for the sake of precedent I would like to tell the Noble Lord that his appeal would have been better addressed to the Chancellor on the Third Reading of the Bill. I can admit as in Order what he said in so far as it was directed to the point of Order, but I do not think his observations were in order on the Question now before the Committee.