NEWS FROM 100 YEARS AGO : 16 May 1925
16 MAY 1925
The Prime Minister, speaking at Oxford, referred to the Unionist party’s policy on the question of housing, insurance, pensions, and cheap electricity.
The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, addressing a National Liberal Federation gathering at Scarborough, criticised the scale of national expenditure. There was only one way of escape, he said, from our financial difficulties, and that was not by imposing taxation, but by cutting down expenditure. Liberals had no objection to the extension and completion of the pensions system; it was their system in every one of its branches. But in view of the burden on industry at present, he should be prepared to accept a temporary abeyance of contribution, the scheme to be financed by the State for the time being.
A Socialist Bill to give power to the Board of Trade, on receipt of representations from the Minister of Health, to investigate prices, conditions of supply, costs, and profits at all stages in respect of materials in common use for the building of houses for the working classes was discussed in the House of Commons. The Minister of Health, opposing the Bill, said there was no need for the drastic treatment it sought to apply. Prices had fallen since the present Government came into office, and were practically steady. If the Government apprehended a monopoly affecting prices to an extravagant extent, they would seek from the House power to control what they would regard as an unsocial act. The Bill was rejected by 232 to 113.
