NATIONAL LOANS BILL. (Hansard, 28 April 1942)

§ The LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON)

My Lords, very few words are needed to commend this Bill to your Lordships' House. It is a Bill with the object of renewing for the present financial year the borrowing powers which were originally conferred on the Treasury by the National Loans Act, 1939, and which were last renewed for the fiscal year 1941–42 by the National Loans Act, 1941. Your Lordships may recall the general scheme of such a measure, which is necessary in the war period. It gives authority to the Treasury to borrow in the present financial year up to the amount of the supply granted for the year with an addition of £250,000,000. At first blush that seems an enormous figure. It is, in fact, far greater than any authority that is likely to be exercised, but it has not been found possible to fix any lower limit than the total amount of the supply of the year though, as your Lordships know, a very large part of the money of course would be raised by taxation.

The only reason why the Bill also provides for an addition of £250,000,000 is that these borrowing powers must be exercised strictly within the financial year. It might happen that just as you are approaching the end of the fiscal year you run short of the money you need to borrow, and therefore there must be authority to borrow for an overlap of a certain amount—£250,000,000 is the comfortable addition which the Bill has been 710 accustomed to make—so that you may thus finance the war in the early days of the next financial year. All that is entirely according to precedent, and I do not doubt that your Lordships will give this Bill an easy passage into law. I need only add that it is necessary for practical reasons to get this Bill upon the Statute Book quite promptly. It passed through all its stages in the House of Commons in one day, and I think your Lordships will probably treat it in the same fashion in your Lordships' House. I beg to move.