HL Deb 19 February 1946 vol 139 cc736-53

6.19 p.m.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

had the following Notice on the Paper: Since the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand have not subscribed to Bretton Woods, thus separating themselves from the policy of His Majesty's Government or this fundamental issue; to ask His Majesty's Government whether, in view of this, they will reconsider their decision to participate in the International Monetary Fund; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, for the first time there is a divergence of opinion on a very big issue between some of the Dominions and Great Britain; both Australia and New Zealand have not ratified the Bretton Woods Final Act. Further, reasons are being given for the refusal to ratify which raise the issue in a very vigorous form. Australia gives two reasons for declining to ratify Bretton Woods. The first is that the Fund is dominated by the United States, a creditor nation, and that debtor nations like Great Britain—although Australia does not mention Great Britain—may be required by the Fund to reduce adverse balances by cutting wage levels. That is one of the reasons given by the Australians. They say that this is a plan which results in expanding exports and reducing imports. In short, Australia detects in this plan deflation with its dreadful consequences. That means, of course, reduction in the standard of living. It means cuts in salaries and wages.

It is the old story of a return to the gold standard, followed by deflation and ending in collapse. We know all about it, for we went through it in 1931. We carried the Dominions through it too. The Bank of England imposed the cuts on us. The purpose was to stimulate exports and reduce imports—the old story—so that the Bank of England might get more foreign currency. It was the gold standard then; it is the gold standard now. The only difference is that, in those days, the cuts were inflicted by our own Government and accepted of our own free will. Hereafter, the cuts will be imposed on us by the Fund which is controlled by a foreign Government, or foreign Governments. But there is no real difference, for it is the reign of the bankers once more—bankers here and in the United States, the international financiers, with their foreign commitments, making money, the bankers there, in America, shouting for it, and the bankers here voting for it, or, in the case of some of them on this side of the House, abstaining from voting for it.

They are all in it together, along with with the Government. The bankers want Bretton Woods and the gold standard, and they will not wait. That policy brought on us misery the last time. It will bring more misery this time. On the last occasion we had Imperial preference, the Empire economic structure and the Empire bloc to sustain us, to hold us up, to help us through, but on this occasion this will all be destroyed. We shall not be able to turn for aid to Empire preference and the sterling bloc. These will have been dissipated.

There is a second ground on which the Australians object to the plan. That is because it interferes with Imperial preference. Here I have a statement of the Prime Minister, Mr. Chifley—shall I give it from the Daily Express? I can give it from the Daily Express or from any paper of your choice. I will give it from the Adelaide Advertiser, which reports Mr. Chifley as saying: The Commonwealth intends to fight for the retention of those Imperial trade preferences which were essential to Australia's future development. The Mail, Adelaide, said: Mr. Chifley last night said the Commonwealth Government intended to fight for the retention of Empire trade preferences. And well they might, for it is indeed a desperate blow, the elimination of Imperial preferences, directed against the whole economy of Australia, a blow so serious that it is difficult to understand how this Government can have contemplated it, and particularly with the opposition and resistance of Australia of which we now have knowledge.

Britain is the only food market for Australia. There is no other country to which Australia sells food. Practically everything that Australia exports in the way of foodstuffs comes to Britain, and to a considerable extent the market of Australia in Great Britain has been built up on preferences. In 10 years of preferences Australia took away trade to the extent of over 2,500,000 hundredweights of meat from the Argentine per year. And yet it is contemplated that every vestige of Imperial preference shall be wiped out. The elimination of preference is what is envisaged. Where then can we turn for any means or any possibility of directing trade to Australia? It seems very difficult, almost impossible. Safeguards have been set up by the various instruments that we have entered into which stand in the way of re-forming the Australia trade in the post-war period. There are quantitative restrictions. These are subject to control and limitation and allocation between sources of supply according to a "previous representative period."

I hope very much that noble Lords who are not members of the Socialist Party, noble Lords who are not of the banking fraternity, will examine these proposals in detail and with great care. They will see the amazing provisions that have been set up, provisions which mean the destruction of Empire trade, provisions that are aimed at the destruction of Empire trade. It will be said, as it was by the Secretary of State not long ago, that State purchase is a method of meeting the situation. But State purchase is controlled. State purchases must be made here at market prices and the Government must sell here at market prices plus tariff. Then, again, it is said that subsidy is a means of dealing with this. But subsidy is also subject to restrictions. If seriously damaging international trade, subsidies can be challenged and must be abandoned.

So, for my part, I see no means by which the channeling of purchases of foodstuffs to Australia is to be promoted after these agreements have been entered into, and if they are entered into on the present basis. In fact, the whole purpose of the instruments is to make sure that our purchases abroad are guided by commercial consideration. That is the main purpose, commercial considerations, governed by price with due regard to accessibility. Favouritism in making our purchases abroad is abolished. It comes to an end with the series of instruments. And mind you this is only the first step in the bankers' ramp. It is the first step in the direction of Free Trade with low wages and unemployment.

You may say that Australia, faced with interference with the market for Australian produce in Britain, can turn to the United States of America. Not so. There is no market for foodstuffs in the United States of America. The United States of America is an exporter of foodstuffs. Australia can sell nothing there. If, as a result of this policy, we, in turn, go to the Argentine for our foodstuffs what does that mean? It means that our money paid to the Argentine will be used by the Argentine to buy goods in the United States of America. Bankers' investments in the Argentine may be strengthened by this process; their investments may be safer. The Argentine may flourish, but Australia may perish.

I want to warn the House that if British interest in this Fund is reduced, and seriously reduced, if Australia and New Zealand continue to refuse to ratify the final instrument, if India also standsout—and India has only made a conditional acceptance—then the British Empire interest in this Fund declines to one quarter, whereas the dollar bloc is just less than half. It will be a complete change of the situation, the Empire only having one quarter, and the dollar bloc almost half. I shall be told that we can withdraw from the Fund. We can indeed, but we can withdraw only after breaking up the economic empire, after destroying the sterling bloc. Then we can leave, and we withdraw, of course, at the expense of very considerable unrest and possibly panic, the same as there was when we went off the gold standard. But the price of withdrawal is the destruction of the economic empire and the end of the sterling bloc. I shall be told that you can never have these commercial proposals anyway, that they depend upon the economic ratification of many nations. It is a pretty poor argument if you are bringing something to this House to say that it may never come to pass because many nations gathered together are not likely to ratify all these proposals. But it is not so.

According to the announced policy of the Government, Sir Stafford Cripps, speaking on December 12, said that these commercial proposals derive from our obligations under Article 7, that they carry out our obligations under Article 7. But we are already bound by bilateral obligations to the commercial proposals. They flow from Article 7, and if Article 7 is a treaty, dissent by foreign countries does not impair the validity of that treaty. What gain do we get from all this trouble we are undertaking, all this dispute and dissension? We have had no help from the United States of America in the present crisis, but we have had a great deal of help from the Dominions. I have the long statement of Dominion assistance here. It is a most gratifying and most heartening and splendid declaration. Why, then, do we set up these dissensions within the Empire? Why tie our financial system to Wall Street and. Washington and the gold standard? The answer is that these are the first steps to the old, bad policy of free trade. It is the policy of the bankers, it is the policy initiated by the bankers, and it is a gay and jolly prospect for the international financiers. I beg to move.

6.33 p.m.

LORD PIERCY

My Lords, I am very anxious to do justice to the arguments which the noble Lord has put forward so brilliantly, but I am bound to join issue with him on one point to begin with, before I make a general point on his Motion as a whole. He speaks of a refusal by Australia to ratify the agreement embodying the International Monetary Fund. He spoke of the "reasons" which were given for this refusal to ratify. I do not wish to do the slightest injustice to the noble Lord, but I am sure he will agree with me that as things stand at present neither in Australia nor in New Zealand has there been any refusal to ratify. In neither country has a proposal been brought forward to Parliament to ratify the Bretton Woods Agreements; and since the matter has not been discussed either in the Parliament of New Zealand or of Australia, there has not been, as yet—I will give the noble Lord that point—a refusal to ratify.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

There was a time limit.

LORD PIERCY

Well, to become an original member of the Fund, you had to join by December 31. I will give reasons later why these proposals came before neither of these Parliaments in time for ratification to take place by December 31. But they are still able to apply for membership, and the question whether they will apply is, as yet, undecided. I shall come back later to the question of the attitude and of the situation of the two Dominions on the question. The general point I make is this. It is now barely two months since His Majesty's Government entered into this group of engagements with the American Government. It was a group of engagements which consisted of five instruments. One of them was the agreement relating to the International Monetary Fund, which the noble Lord has picked out. Another was the declaration, that is technically what it was, setting out the final settlement of Lend-Lease and Mutual Aid. I have not heard any voice in this House raised against that settlement. Another was the Loan Agreement. That is a horse of a different colour, but although noble Lords looked at the Loan Agreement from above and below, and from the front and behind, on balance they felt it was to be accepted.

These five instruments were presented to us as a group. I agree that that might be unfortunate, but from the American point of view the five things—the Loan, the settlement of Lend-Lease, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Bank, and the heads of the agenda for the Conference on International Trade and Employment—hung together and they were presented all together. I will admit that theoretically, academically, we could have made our acceptance of that group of instruments conditional upon the entry by Australia and New Zealand into the agreement relating to the International Monetary Fund as original members before the 31st December, which was the preliminary date. But we did not make that reservation. The Government entered into these engagements without making that reservation, and what I do want to put, with very great respect to the noble Lord whose brilliancy I admire, is this: Is it possible or is it conceivable as an act of statesmanship that we at this juncture should repudiate these agreements or endeavour to single out any one of them for repudiation? If that is not what Lord Beaverbrook means, I am not clear as to what his Motion does mean, because he asks His Majesty's Government "whether in view of this they will reconsider their decision." Reconsideration of a decision which does not involve taking any steps is nothing. I cannot believe that Lord Beaverbrook had not in his mind, in view of the situation of Australia and New Zealand, that the Government should take some steps. My general point then is this: that it is not conceivable that we should rip up these engagements that we entered into barely two months ago.

I pass from that to consider in detail some of the points which have been made While it is a fact that the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand have not so far ratified these agreements, that is a purely chronological fact. When the noble Lord goes on to say the Dominions do not subscribe to Bretton Woods, "thus separating themselves from the policy of His Majesty's Government on this fundamental issue," I must observe that that is merely an inference, and I venture to say, an inference which at the present moment it would be somewhat rash to draw. The position in New Zealand was, as I understand, that this question of ratification came up at the very end of the Session a little before Christmas. Noble Lords will recollect how our own discussions in another place and in this House were jammed against the end of the Session.

In New Zealand there were three points which carried some weight. In the first place—I wish to tread upon this ground very delicately because one must when dealing with a question like this, which is an unsettled question, and which has still to come before the Parliaments of these Dominions—I think it is reasonable and correct to say that the New Zealand Government was swayed to some extent by the fact that we had not yet taken our decision. There was some diffidence, I 'am sure, about taking a decision on this matter before we had taken our decision here.

Secondly, there is no manner of doubt that the New Zealand Prime Minister had promised the Members of Parliament there that they should have ample time to discuss the matter. When it came up a week before the end of the Session there was a theoretical possibility of extending the Session, which would have brought it right up against Christmas, but as a matter of Parliamentary management it was not possible to extend the Session. Therefore, in New Zealand this matter was not dealt with last Session really and truly because there was not the time in the Parliamentary situation of the moment, and it is to come up again at the next Session of the New Zealand Parliament in June.

I believe I am correct in saving that in Australia the House was not sitting at the time. However that may be, I am clear on this point: the question has not been discussed in the Australian Parliament, and therefore will come up some time in the future. I wish to suggest that there is no solid ground for assuming that in either of these countries ratification will not eventually take place. As far as one can judge—of course, this is all secondhand, at any rate in my case—there is ground for believing that in New Zealand the chances are in favour of ratification. In Australia, the opposition to Bretton Woods is larger, more vocal, more solid and mere reasoned, and some of the reasons which inform it have been described by the noble Lord.

Although one cannot exactly bracket New Zealand and Australia, two considerations are prominent in both countries and as regards each there is something that may help the situation. In the first place, both countries, I think, are rather concerned about the question of flexibility as applying to exchange rates. It will be within the knowledge of noble Lords that neither Australia nor New Zealand have been involved in any sense in the loan agreement. They have stood completely outside that. That is a transaction between ourselves and the American Government. It follows, therefore—or rather, associated with that fact is this fact—that whereas under the loan agreement we have to give convertibility within a rather limited period, within a year, they have the entire period of five years to settle the exchange rates and begin convertibility. Thus they have a far greater opportunity for ranging their initial exchange rates on the target accurately and for choosing their time for commencing convertibility of their currency. I think that that consideration, when it comes to a close discussion, should assist them on that particular point.

The other point undoubtedly is that in New Zealand you have got the question of secondary industries. In Australia you have got the general question of industrialisation, which has begun in a promising way, and is going forward at a good rate. No doubt they are anxious on a point which arises not on Bretton Woods but on the heads of the agenda for the International Conference—they are anxious on the score of the protection of their infant or developing industries. Although, of course, there may be some disadvantage in these countries not having joined the Fund at the very beginning, on the other hand, if a decision is deferred for a few months, there seems little reason why it should not be taken contemporaneously with the discussions of the International Conference; so that it may very well be that Australia and New Zealand alike may have some clearer light on what precisely these various heads and terms relating to State trading and subsidies and the rest of it will be than they have at this particular moment. It may be an advantage in that way for them to postpone a decision, and that may help them to come to a decision in the sense of joining the Fund.

To deal with the remaining points, one of them is this, that while it is extraordinarily important for us to make a correct decision in our own case, it does not follow that it is equally important or in any degree essential that the decision we make on these matters should be the same as the decision made by Australia and New Zealand. For us it is absolutely fundamental that we should have a means of dealing with what I call the reconversion gap, this great gap in our balance of payments that will last for the next two or three years. That is the reason for the loan. Of course, one may say if we do not take this loan we would get some other loan from the Import-Export Bank. I for one would not like that. It is important for us that we should have a means of meeting that gap, and it has been impressed on us in the last day or two.

I would say this, that whether or not the two Dominions ratify Bretton Woods, it will be very useful for them that we should have this loan because it will enable us to give them some convertibility into dollars—and they must have some; and, paradoxical as it may seem, if they should decide that it is their correct course to stay out, it may well be that our being in and having this loan may help them to make that decision.

Secondly, it is vitally important to us that we should settle correctly the principle of our long-term trade policy. I must not go deeply into that. I am ready to admit and to concede to the noble Lord that the correct solution of the principle of our long-term trade policy is, if you like to put it that way, in the direction of free trade; that is to say, I believe that for a considerable time to come it is important for us to have multilateral trade; so that, to take the simplest example, if we sell most of our exports, let us say, to country A, we could get most of our imports from country B, because there are trade relations between A and B, and it works in the form of a triangle. Multilateral trade means that you have freedom to buy or sell within a whole group of countries without necessarily matching up the bargains. That is very important for us.

We want two things fundamentally in our future prospects. The first is that kind of freedom of enterprise which goes with multilateral trade as distinct from barter arrangements. The second is that we want that trade in an expanding world economy. That implies freedom on the part of countries to trade; it implies importing largely; and exporting largely; and it implies, above all, that countries should be helped to reconstruct their economic machinery, to develop their economic machinery and bring it up to high standards of efficiency, and that backward countries should be assisted to get modern machinery of production. Without that we shall not have an expanding world economy; but we cannot have that unless there is a revival of international investment. I think myself, if I may be forgiven for using a vulgar expression, that international investment is "bust to the wide" without some such mechanism as the United Nations Bank. Therefore I stoutly maintain that our country's correct line of policy is along the line of multilateral trade. Quite irrespective of the other elements of that group of engagements, it would have been to our advantage to accede to the Bretton Woods Agreements. I believe they give us, on the one hand, an indispensable mechanism for conducting our current trade, and an indispensable mechanism for the revival of international investment; and I say that we get those benefits with certain safeguards which we could not have otherwise obtained. In the International Monetary Fund we get the orderly changes in exchange rates. It is, of course, this device of an orderly change in particular rates according to the circumstances of a particular country that differentiates the whole Bretton Woods scheme from the gold standard. We get a guarantee against competitive currency depreciation, and we have those very valuable scarce currency clauses. In the case of the United Nations Bank we get a device which drains off, or should drain off, the United States' incorrigible surplus of exports, and therefore its favourable balance, and we get, along with that, a safeguard against the 100 per cent. clauses which are put in the loans of the Import-Export Bank and provide that wherever American money goes, the dollars must be spent on American goods. American dollars, through the United Nations Bank, if the scheme works, will be spent amongst other things on British goods.

Those are the points which I think make that decision necessary for us, but I do not think, and I do not feel, that as an inevitable consequence Australia and New Zealand must decide in the same way. Personally, I hope they will; I think in the long run it would benefit them to decide in the same way. But suppose they decide to stay out: Are they damnified by the fact that we are in? I do not think it necessarily follows at all. We should still remain the great market for their exports of foodstuffs; we should still retain all these trade and economic links that we have had. And besides that, as a concluding point, it does not seem to me to follow in the very least that if we go in, as we shall do if the Loan is ratified, and if the Australians and New Zealanders stay out, as they may stay out, that is an end of Imperial preferences. Imperial preferences, I agree very much with the noble Lord, as he said on a previous occasion in this House, have been put on the table to bargain with; they are for sale. That is a way of putting it, and we must concede that, but they are not sold yet, and there will be a great deal of skilful and hard bargaining before we sell out on Imperial preferences. There is no reason why we ever should sell out unless we and the Dominions get a bargain that satisfies us. Therefore I must say that I do not feel that the noble Lord's Motion is one that can be supported.

6.56 p.m.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON)

My Lords, I have been interested, as I always am, in the noble Lord's remarks. His speech has been of the same order of cheerfulness as those to which we have been accustomed to listen of late, and while I am quite sure that his forebodings have no relevance to the facts of the situation, I will just deal very briefly with one or two of the points he has raised before I sit down.

In the first place, may I just give the cold facts of the case, which are always useful, if not perhaps always acceptable. The facts are that this Agreement was required to be ratified by a certain proportion of the States by the end of last year, and your Lordships will remember that it was ratified by this Government late in December, shortly before the Recess. It is quite to be expected that, with the large sterling balances that they hold, and with the many other very important collateral considerations, the Dominions should be anxious to know what we were going to do, as an important factor in their own deliberations. We put it no higher than that. But it is a fact, of course, that, amongst the Dominions, Canada and South Africa signified their adherence to the Bretton Woods arrangement before the end of last year, so that the division which the noble Lord professes to discover between ourselves and the Dominions is not quite so complete as perhaps might have been anticipated. At the same time, India, so far as the Executive Council are concerned also ratified it in time, although certain matters are still being investigated by the Assembly.

Now the next point is: what has happened with regard to Australia and New Zealand? So far as Australia is concerned, the facts are as follows. The Australian Parliament had already risen when ratification was being decided in this country, and they did not meet, of course, again before the end of the year. At the same time I may say that I have received no information whatever of any official kind from the Australian Government to the effect that they have no intention of ratifying this Agreement. I have been in almost daily contact with the representatives of Australia, for some weeks past, in connexion with the Conference which has been assembled in London, and I assure the noble Lord that on no occasion whatever has any representative of the Australian Government made any protest to me with regard to this matter. The statements which the noble Lord has mentioned are, of course, taken from the Press, and I have no doubt at all that if an Australian had been so inclined, he could have found quite a number of statements from the English Press, which would not have led him to believe that we were going to ratify the Agreement. I am quite sure that the Daily Express, for example, might have given that impression to such a person. Whatever may have been said in the Press, I have nothing from any official source whatever to lead me to believe at present that the Australian Government, when the Parliament meets, will not ratify this convention. Of course, it is for them to say whether they will or will not, but I have no reason to believe that they will fail to do so.

With regard to New Zealand, the facts are as follows: The New Zealand Government, on December 24—that is-two or three days after the Agreement was rati- fied in this country—informed the United States Government that time did not permit of their being able to sign the Agreement before December 31, and Parliament adjourned and will meet again in June. At the same time, it was stated by the New Zealand Government that it was their intention to bring the matter before Parliament when it assembled in June, together with the recommendations of the New Zealand delegates to the Bretton Woods Conference, that they may be accepted. Mr. Nash, the New Zealand Minister, on January 1 made a public statement confirming that intention.

Those are the bare facts so far as these two Dominions are concerned. As I say, the other two self-governing Dominions have already ratified the Agreement. Further, this scheme drawn up at Bretton Woods, was the work of delegates of forty-four countries—amongst them Australia and New Zealand. The Australian delegation was led by Mr. Melville, and the New Zealand delegation by Mr. Walter Nash. The Final Act of the Conference was signed by all the delegates, including these two gentlemen; so that, so far as that was concerned, they were certainly agreeable to its being considered in the form in which it was then drawn up.

Finally, on this particular point, I would like to say this, that I myself have been in very close association with Mr. Fraser, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, during the last few weeks, including a conversation as late as to-day, and on no occasion has he ever made any objection to this Agreement to me—never. Nor has Mr. Fraser on any occasion given utterance to me of any of the forebodings with which the noble Lord filled his speech. In fact, he is full of enthusiasm for the Empire and for Empire development, and I have no doubt myself, knowing him as I do, that if he had had any of the misgivings that the noble Lord has so paraded before us, he would have at least mentioned some of them at some time. I think that is not an exaggerated suggestion. As a matter of fact, he has not, because he knows very well it is not anything of the kind.

I will just come to one of the statements of the noble Lord. He used a number of phrases—I will not repeat them all—but he suggested it was a "banker's ramp," and they were going to impose the gold standard upon us, which would cause deflation. How the noble Lord works that out, I do not know, but it appears that he believes it to follow from something which may happen as a result of considering the Commercial Agreement. If he thinks of the Party to which I belong, which was thrown out of office because it opposed the "bankers' ramp" as he described it in 1931, and went into the wilderness for several years because it opposed deflation and the forced reduction in prices and wages—I am surprised that he should think we should be quite so shortsighted as to lend ourselves to a repetition of that disastrous performance. I think that is not unreasonable.

LORD WOOLTON

You yourself did not describe it as a "bankers' ramp."

VISCOUNT ADDISON

I was quoting the noble Lord's phrase. But I myself in 1931 associated myself with the condemnation of the performances of the Bank of England and deflation as forcibly as anybody, and I am glad to say I have never regretted it. I refused to follow Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. Snowden and put myself, with several friends, into the wilderness for several years in consequence. We opposed the "bankers' ramp" as hard as ever we could then, and I am glad to find that the noble Lord is now on our side.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

In 1931 I opposed it quite as violently as you did. I called it a "bankers' ramp." You can't get away with that.

VISCOUNT ADDISON

I did the noble Lord an injustice, and I deplore it. However, I am very glad to say that he is at last on the side of the angels. Really, quite frankly, it is a beautiful imaginative structure which the noble Lord has conjured up. He suggests that this Government are going to be "parties to the destruction of Empire trade"—those are his words. On the contrary, we believe, my Lords, that we shall be able to foster a great increase in Empire trade; that is what we are aiming at.

I will not now go over the arguments which we had on another day on the meaning of the Commercial Agreement, but I am quite sure that neither this country nor Australia, nor Canada, nor New Zealand, nor South Africa, will be parties to entering into any agreement, when the commercial conference comes on, under which they are not satisfied that they will get full value. We all enter it as free parties, and I am quite sure we shall never agree to anything which, in our view, would either destroy Empire trade or be inimical to Empire interests. As a matter of fact, strange as it may appear to the noble Lord—and I shall never hope to convince him, because he and I see quite differently in these matters—in believe that our methods of fostering Empire trade by large scale purchases and other means are much more to our mutual interest than leaving it to the chance of the market.

That is our view, and for my part I sincerely hope that we shall continue to be not only the best customers of Australia and New Zealand, but increasingly good customers in the time to come. For myself, I have not any doubt of it whatever, and I am quite sure that nothing that is likely to arise out of the Commercial Conference or out of this engagement will be inimical to that achievement. In any case, these are the facts in regard to those two Dominions. In the one case, New Zealand have signified their intention of recommending it to their Parliament when it meets. In the other case, I have so far had no official indication of objection, although I have been in almost daily communication with them for months past, and I am quite sure that if that had been in the mind of the Government I should certainly have heard something about it. So I would suggest to the noble Lord that his fears are entirely unwarranted, and that I hope and feel confident that the future is better than he anticipates.

7.11 p.m.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

My Lords, I heard the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, with a great deal of pleasure, but I would point out to him that if the Dominions do not ratify Bretton Woods, if they stand aside, if they take no active part in it, then of course they may be discriminated against. That is the meaning of Bretton Woods. It may be possible to discriminate against Australia as compared with Guatemala. Guatemala will say that that Republic has undertaken certain obligations to Bretton Woods and is entitled to the benefits and advantages, and Australia, having taken no obligations, gets no benefits or advantages. We may find ourselves in a credit and commercial system which actually discriminates against Australia and New Zealand, if neither of them are in the arrangement. That is one of the terrors of this Bretton Woods arrangement which I hope you will keep before you and study, because there are ramifications in the Bretton Woods agreement which require close study on the part of all of us if we are not to be plunged into difficulties from which we will find we cannot extricate ourselves. I agree with the noble Viscount's remarks regarding Mr. Nash's statement. I believe he was quoting from The Times.

VISCOUNT ADDISON

No, I quoted from my official information. But it is the same.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

It is the same as the newspapers. Then you will be aware of the newspaper reports about the unrest in Australia; and of the differences in the Cabinet, of the meeting of the Cabinet, of the division and even of the numbers on the other side which are being quoted in the newspapers.

VISCOUNT ADDISON

The noble Lord will know that I and much too old and experienced to accept a newspaper account of what happens in a Cabinet as necessarily correct.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

The statements have been made quite openly and have been given to the people of Australia, who are waiting upon the deliberations of the Government and are entitled to know what is going forward. New Zealand has said that time would not permit of her ratification of the Agreement. Russia says just the same thing, so Russia and New Zealand at this moment are taking up exactly the same position. The noble Viscount speaks of the Final Act and those who ratified it. But the Final Act did not commit the Governments; it merely committed the Governments to consider the Bretton Woods proposals.

There was not the slightest obligation on any Minister or delegate who signed the Final Act. I can tell him, as a certainty in regard to Great Britain, that there were many who would have had to take up an attitude in relation to the British Government if the Final Act at that time had committed the British Government. There would be many who would have had to take up an attitude at once. For my part, I know full well that the noble Viscount is under the impression that he was put out by the bankers in 1931. Perhaps that is why he is so subservient to them this time; he may be frightened he will be put out again. In any case it was Lord Snowden who launched the gold standard. I do not think the noble Lord was a member of the Government at the time, but there are others on that Front Bench who were.

VISCOUNT ADDISON

No.

LORD BEAVERBROOK

Well, that Front Bench interests me enormously any way. It is certainly not descended from Keir Hardie, with the exception of one who sits on the Bench beyond. I think it must be descended from that eminent member of the Party, the late Lady Warwick. I heard the noble Lord declaring that I wished to be on the side of the angels. Last time he spoke he said I was like Satan, quoting Scripture for my own purposes. But I did not mind; I am magnanimous. I am not Satanic in the least; I return good for evil. I compare him to St. Paul, but, unlike St. Paul, he has seen the light four times altogether. He has been in four Parties and served in office in three out of the four. I do not know if he will see the light again. If Ananias—the good Ananias—comes his way again and shows him the light, he may be blinded for good.

In any case, I am going to withdraw, I can assure him. I only regret that the noble Viscount, for whom I have the greatest admiration, even though he says I am like Satan, did not begin his speech with the customary formula. It is not fair that I only am permitted to engage in half the formula. When any other speaker gets up in this House, after his speech the Front Bench spokesman says, "We are indeed grateful to the noble Lord for his speech, and deeply grateful to him for raising the matter". Then the noble Lord concerned says, "I beg leave to withdraw". And I do beg leave to withdraw.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.