§ There has been very little variation in most prices of the necessaries of life in the last four years. That has been a great boon to all pensioners and to all other persons living upon fixed, and especially upon small fixed money incomes. It should not be under-estimated in current discussion on future policy. These subsidies, operated in the way I am describing, have been and are still a most timely grant-in-aid to every household budget in the land. They might indeed be described as a heavy load of indirect taxation in reverse, because that is what they arc. But this policy has not only kept down the prices of the foodstuffs and the other goods which have been subsidised by the Exchequer. It has also helped to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates which, if it had occurred, might have disturbed the whole balance of our economic life, and might have sucked us into the fatal whirlpool of inflation.