What have the Government done to prepare for the coming Foreign Exchange Crisis?

It means that and it also means a decline in our diplomatic power, it means inefficient production leading to unemployment, and lastly it means what so many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, a coming Foreign Exchange Crisis - a crisis in our balance of payments.

That was bound to result in a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

I know that the foreign travel concessions are not directly a question of dollars, but the ban on foreign travel was one of the hardships imposed at the time of the Foreign Exchange Crisis.

The first effect has been a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

If they try, as the hon. Member for Dagenham tell us they will, to spend their way out of unemployment, they will spend themselves straight into a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

Where this policy led was to a Major Foreign Exchange Crisis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Mr. Eccles) rightly said the other day that if we now wanted to try to spend our way out of unemployment we should spend ourselves straight into a Foreign Exchange Crisis of the first magnitude.

Today we know that if we tried to do this we should spend ourselves straight into a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

In the late spring of last year we started to run into a Foreign Exchange Crisis, and the Government decided to postpone the crisis until after the Election.

Even in May, 1952, when we were still facing a Serious Foreign Exchange Crisis, in that month - unlike the months preceding it and certain months following it - there was an increase in those reserves of 16 million dollars.

Sterling is under heavy pressure, but we have said many times this year that the scale of the Government's borrowings and the mobilisation of the second line of financial reserves ought to be enough to see us through this year without a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

I now turn to the problems, and I will start with the Foreign Exchange Crisis.

Since the economy has been subject to rather less strain than previously, we have had not one Foreign Exchange Crisis every two years but one every year.

Taking the worst view of the Labour Government, that Government never produced a Foreign Exchange Crisis more than once every two years.

Not only during these two years have we had a double rate of Foreign Exchange Crisis, but we have had, even taking into account the enormous benefit we got from the change in the terms of trade, no real approach to price stability at home.

Why is it, in these circumstances, that we had, such a short time ago, a very Serious Foreign Exchange Crisis?

Another year has gone by and nothing has been done to meet the Foreign Exchange Crisis.

There was the Foreign Exchange Crisis and rescuing the £.

Under the system as it now is and is to continue, supposing a profligate Government with an enormous Budget deficit plays ducks and drakes with the currency and, unable to fund, runs into a Foreign Exchange Crisis, as it inevitably would; in such circumstances, the Governor of the Bank of England would say to the Chancellor, "The only conceivable way of preventing the £ going and of preventing the break-up of the sterling area is a sharp and brutal change of gear; we must have a big rise in the Bank Rate".

Under this Government, whenever we have reached a position when there was no longer a surplus of men running after every job, we have had a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

If one is to apply a regulator in the hope of dealing with a Foreign Exchange Crisis, one should do it quickly.

After all, I am dealing with these two regulators because the Chancellor, having diagnosed the illness of the patient, said that these were necessary to deal with any sudden critical condition - that is to say, as I see it, with a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

Let us consider a situation, for example, in which, for one reason or another, a Foreign Exchange Crisis blows up.

Whenever we have reached a position where there were no longer too many men pursuing too few jobs we have been confronted with a Foreign Exchange Crisis.

Take, for instance, all the agricultural matters which fall to be settled by a qualified majority, or the question of Any Possible Foreign Exchange Crisis where we wanted to reimpose restrictions.

The urgency of redeploying our forces, as the House knows, enormously increased last July during the Foreign Exchange Crisis.

It was one of inflation followed by Foreign Exchange Crisis, retrenchment, recession, inflation and further devaluation.

The country is facing an Acute Foreign Exchange Crisis limiting its ability to import fuel, energy and basic food grains to meet the looming food deficit.

and rising; the official exchange rate is wildly out of line with reality and has resulted in a Foreign Exchange Crisis; all prices are controlled; fuel is almost unavailable; and even people who have money cannot buy food.