Persistence of Apprehensions and Deficit Financing

Abstract

My Lords, may I address my limited remarks to the speech made from the Government benches, by the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal. As may be expected, this was a forceful, lucid and candid speech, and it contained many utterances, some as asides, with which one could feel in complete agreement. I doubt whether many of us in this House would disagree with his emphasis that inflation was the main problem. I suspect, however, that he worked the overseas misfortunes rather too hard. There is no doubt the world is undergoing a recession more severe than we have experienced since the War. But the rest of the world has a fairly good prospect of recovery, and our prospects are not all that robust as things go at the moment. What must never be forgotten—and I hope is never forgotten by ministers responsible for policy—is that our position fundamentally is far worse than the position of the other industrial powers of the Free World. Inflation here has been four times as great as that in Germany and, at the present time, is very substantially greater than in the United States of America.