This disparity in the rate of economic recovery and expansion is the fundamental reason for the balance of Payments Crisis which now threatens the world.

Mr. Belcher: As my right hon. Friends the Lord President and Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in Debate on 8th July, His Majesty's Government will take all appropriate measures within their power in connection with the general dollar balance of Payments Crisis with which the world is threatened.

Nobody will deny - unhappily, nobody can deny - that this country is in a balance of Payments Crisis, and, according to the estimate which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave us yesterday, the American loan will have run out before the House re-assembles, if it does re-assemble on the date suggested in October.

First, why is it he did not foresee that his policy would lead to the balance of Payments Crisis, when it was so clearly foreseen in many speeches in this House and articles written in the papers?

With these things happening, we were in 1938, under vastly easier conditions, running into a very severe balance of Payments Crisis.

That was because of the balance of Payments Crisis which struck this country in August and because that meant that we had to stop all purchases of foodstuffs from the United States, saving no less than £12 million worth of dollars a month by that cessation of United States purchases.

But in a few months' time we may well be arriving at a Crisis of Payments even more drastic than last year, a crisis in which, if we are to maintain enough food to keep our people, we shall have to increase our exports by say 20 per cent.

Today the hon. Member for Hornsey, who knows better, talks as if there is no balance of Payments Crisis.

In the second stage - 18 months or so ago - when the balance of Payments Crisis became severe - we shifted the emphasis and put the main priority on industrial schemes which had export value and dollar saving value.

The balance of Payments Crisis was too serious to admit of any playing about with an increase in the amount of remittable sterling earned by American film companies in this country.

Any attempt to spend our way out of unemployment will result at once in a Payments Crisis.

I certainly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, because since the White Paper was published showing that we have balanced our accounts for the past six months, for the first time since, I think, 1935 or 1936, he is, I believe, the first Conservative leader who has come within measurable distance of making any reference whatever to the balance of Payments Crisis.

We have adapted ourselves before, but those of us who were trained in the hard school of listening to and understanding the well justified jeremiads of Sir Stafford Cripps will understand that today we are facing a general balance of Payments Crisis and not, as in 1949, a problem predominantly of trade between the sterling area and the dollar area.

The right hon. Gentleman will agree that, as this is not just a United Kingdom balance of Payments Crisis but also a sterling area crisis, if this hoped for change in the terms of trade should take place, there would be a debit in respect of the rest of the sterling area as well as a credit in respect of the United Kingdom itself?

We heard nothing whatever about abalance of Payments Crisis equal to that of 1947 or of 1949.

We are at the moment facing the third balance of Payments Crisis we have had to face in five years: 1947.

The balance of Payment Crisis had been developing for some months and was clear enough even to an unofficial person like myself; but none of the necessary steps were taken.

That is the situation, and it is nonsense and reckless irresponsibility to boil it down to some balance of Payments Crisis.

Let me say at once that our food problem goes far beyond our present balance of Payments Crisis, grievous though that is in itself, and we shall get all muddled up in our thinking about it if we make an entirely different assumption.

If my hon. Friend says that the increase of the re-armament figures from £3,600 million to £4,700 million hascaused the balance of Payments Crisis, will he explain how?

The party opposite inherits the balance of Payments Crisis; of course it does.

We have had a very wide ranging debate today, but I want to come back to the central problem of the present balance of Payments Crisis, and to discuss some of the causes, and the remedies suggested by the Government.

The result was inflation, rising prices, lagging production, a balance of Payments Crisis and an accentuation of the raw material crisis.

The Budget supplements the emergency action already taken to deal with the balance of Payments Crisis.

I would ask such critics to remember that all the new measures we are necessarily taking to deal with the balance of Payments Crisis - the reduction in imports and the increase in exports - are of course inflationary in effect because they reduce what is available for consumption without a corresponding reduction in spending power.

Also, we must not forget how the cotton trade is affected by the balance of Payments Crisis.

What Clause in this Bill will help us overcome our balance of Payments Crisis?

Surely, in our present balance of Payments Crisis, it is to our national advantage that enterprises producing gold should produce more gold.

As I said last November, if there is a slight movement in the American economy, we quite easily have a very deep recession, with a balance of Payments Crisis, in this country; we lose gold and are subject to the present kind of import cuts.

Of course, in face of the re-armament campaign, and, above all, in face of the balance of Payments Crisis we have a very grave situation to face perhaps more difficult than those of our predecessors.

We inherited a balance of Payments Crisis of the utmost gravity.

If there was something in the Budget which gave it any claim to be called an emergency Budget dealing with the balance of Payments Crisis it was the stiffening of the Bank rate.

It is no good the Minister saying that we shall solve the housing problem in any-thing like the time in which we have to deal with the re-armament problem and the balance of Payments Crisis.

Only last year, the rise and fall in the prices of only three commodities, not produced in Britain, precipitated the balance of Payments Crisis which this country is fighting to overcome at the present moment.

That such a proposal should be made in all seriousness by hon. Members opposite when they were dismissed from office at a time when the balance of Payments Crisis in this country was at its worst, when we were all living beyond our means, is, I suggest, utterly irresponsible.

On assuming power, the Government were faced with the immediate task of averting a major balance of Payments Crisis.

Therefore, what I am pleading for is that we should have a Minister for British economic expansion who would be responsible for keeping a vigilant eye upon the future - not only tomorrow, not only to talk about what we are to do with a balance of Payments Crisis in 1952–53, but how Great Britain is to face the economic crises of the next 25 years or more.

What has been the policy of the Government for solving Our Payments Crisis?

A point which I believe only applies to the export of shipping is that not only does the export of shipping directly contribute to our present balance of Payments Crisis, but, in the case of shipping, the export is almost entirely to what I might call the democratic powers and, in fact, although we are exporting shipping, we are building a mercantile marine which if we were landed in war would, as in 1939, be again at our service.

A small change in world conditions could lead to a worsening inthe terms of trade, or the conditions of our export trade could bring about a new balance of Payment Crisis quite easily, a crisis which might come out of the blue.

We shall drift from one balance of Payments Crisis to another, and each will be resolved, or apparently resolved, at a lower level of consumption and production, until we attain our final equilibrium with the standard of life, and, I dare say, the political institutions as well, of a People's Democracy, like the Soviet Union or the Chinese People's Republic.

We all suffer from an incipient balance of Payments Crisis whenever we pass one of the expensive shops in the West End.

Which, after all, is the better, that there should be an increase which the Government of the party opposite were powerless to prevent, unaccompanied by any compensating increases, or that there should be a deliberate increase accompanied by increases in social service benefits and decreases in taxation as part of a monetary policy which has had obvious advantages in helping to solve the balance of Payments Crisis?

On the one hand, is the precipice of inflation, an investment boom in factory building and a first-class balance of Payments Crisis.

The right hon. Gentleman's flawless lucidity of exposition would perhaps have been a little more convincing if there had not come into my mind, as I am sure there came to the minds of many of us in this Committee, the recollection that the right hon. Gentleman, who was demonstrating, at any rate to his own satisfaction, the complete perfection of his own economic policy and the imperfections of the Chancellor's, was the same right hon. Gentleman who left the finances of the country in a condition of a grave and growing balance of Payments Crisis which required urgent action to prevent a national disaster.

There is clearly a very serious danger that higher output will lead to higher imports, and will plunge us back again into a balance of Payments Crisis.

Either it will make the present Bank rate policy ineffective and we shall start the inflation again - in other words, 1953 will lay the foundations of the balance of Payments Crisis of 1955 and that will be the end of us - or, alternatively - and this is a danger which I think will appeal to hon. Members opposite - we shall reach this position: the classical prescription, which has been applied, for killing inflation is indeed dearer money, but it has to be short and sharp.

The nation came through the last balance of Payments Crisis, but at the end of it the patient's vitality was lowered and his productive power was less.

Professor Paish draws this conclusion about the present outlook:While the fall in stocks has provided a relief from the immediate balance of Payments Crisis the cure is essentially temporary and cannot be relied on to solve the problem permanently, or, perhaps, even in 1953.

To my mind, any attempt to solve a balance of Payments Crisis by import control alone must inevitably fail, unless it also takes fiscal and monetary measures to get rid of inflation at home.

He saw his 1951 Budget falsified in every particular within six months and found himself, before the ink on his Estimates were dry, in the middle of another inflation and a balance of Payments Crisis which proved one of the most serious since the war.

Furthermore, the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes no attempt at all to deal with one of the most flagrant weaknesses in the British system, and that is that whenever we have a balance of Payments Crisis there is £400 million or £500 million of funk money in the City which immediately takes flight abroad and increases the anxieties and difficulties of the country.

But we were also faced with the worst balance of Payments Crisis which this country has had for many years, a balance of payments crisis which meant the draining of our life blood and the ultimate collapse and devaluation of sterling.

We must steer a pretty narrow course between the danger of allowing too much slack in the economy and the danger of creating a balance of Payments Crisis through inflation.

If we do not continue to overcome satisfactorily our balance of Payments Crisis, nothing that we want to do inside the country is possible.

It is a fact, and it has been stated without fear of contradiction, that when the Leader of the Opposition decided to ask for a dissolution of Parliament and to go to the country the Socialist Government were faced with the worst balance of Payments Crisis that this country has ever known.

It is a fact that my right hon. Friend's policy, of which this is an important part, has broadly achieved the purpose for whichit was conceived by, first of all, rescuing our economy from the grave balance of Payments Crisis which we found, and, as part and parcel of that process, by checking the steady inflationary process which, broadly, had continued since the war.

We cannot have a Keynesian theory in a balance of Payments Crisis.

The balance of Payments Crisis was to that extent dealt with.

We had a balance of Payments Crisis then which was made much worse than it should have been because the fact that the majority of the British Press exerted its utmost influence to undermine confidence in that Labour Government and a great many British businessmen, with less than maximum patriotism, exaggerated the crisis by making inroads on our dollar resources which this country could not stand.

I feel very strongly that this is perhaps the most serious part of what our balance of Payment Crisis will be if the recession becomes serious.

Then Australia faced a balance-of-Payments Crisis and cut down her imports from Japan.

It was the right hon. Gentleman's Budget policy which, as he perfectly well knows, left the economy of this country in the height of a balance of Payments Crisis, and it is my right hon. Friend's efforts that have gone a long way to restore the position.

Whereas those who predicted disaster have been proved wrong, as prophets often are, I do think that those who were very concerned, not about the probability of a balance of Payments Crisis, but at the measure of misfortune that would bring on the country, may still have cause for anxiety.

We were reduced to that level of imports because we had to impose cuts to get over the balance of Payments Crisis which would not have been anything like as heavy if the right hon. Gentleman had imposed them himself while he was in office, as he could have done.

To sum up, the argument I have been trying to deploy in reply to the Amendment is this, that we have, since we were elected, dealt with the balance of Payments Crisis which was bequeathed to us, and that we have restored the international value of the £; we have dealt with the legacy of inflation which was handed over to us; we are achieving a record level of output and productivity on a sound financial basis; and we have been able to achieve great social advances both in house building and now in pensions.

no balance of Payments Crisis.

There is no dollar mystery there; no balance of Payments Crisis.

If he keeps full employment he risks a balance of Payments Crisis.

Between 1951 and 1952, we dealt with an inflationary situation at home and a balance of Payments Crisis abroad.

The Minister of Supply put his finger on a vital problem when he mentioned the fact that whatever Government may be in power, and whoever stands at that Box, faces a very grave economic problem in that this country in future will be constantly trying to avoid either a balance of Payments Crisis, on the one hand, or a domestic unemployment crisis, on the other.

I suppose the explanation is to be found in the first sentence of the leading article in the "Observer" of yesterday, which stated:It is not impossible that by the time most of us go away for our summer holidays - and I devoutly hope that we shall - the country will be in the midst of a balance-of-Payments Crisis more serious and more menacing than that which afflicted us in the autumn and winter of 1951.

But they have been falling, and they are not sufficient to see us through a major international balance-of-Payments Crisis.

We may disagree on how that balance is to be achieved, but we must have that balance, because if there is too little purchasing power, we get unemployment and all that follows with it, and if we have too much purchasing power, we get inflation which, allowed to go too far, is the most unjust form of taxation, and, if unaccompanied by an equivalent amount of inflation in competitor countries would result in a disastrous balance of Payments Crisis.

It may be better to have a little more unemployment than we have today if those workers unemployed are unemployed for only a short time rather than to run into a balance of Payments Crisis 1102 in which we might fail to get raw materials and have more unemployment.

I do not believe that there will ever be mass unemployment again in this country, except for one reason alone, and that is a balance of Payments Crisis which would prevent us from getting raw materials.

We also had an extremely serious balance of Payments Crisis at that time.

We have good reason for believing that a good deal of what the Chancellor and the Government are proposing is merely the introduction of the Tory philosophy and economic and social policy, and that, if they can hang that on the peg of the balance of Payments Crisis, they think they will get by more easily than if they had introduced it in the normal way.

If we stop inflation we stop a rise in the cost of living, but if we stop a rise in the cost of living by controls or by a remission of taxes we increase inflationary pressure and thereby run into a balance of Payments Crisis which would be even more disastrous than a rise in the cost of living.

The whole House knows that the future of British production, our ability to overcome the balance of Payments Crisis and to pay our way in the world, is going to depend on the free flow of oil from the Middle East.

secondly, in my view, they are a breach of faith by the party opposite with the old-age pensioners of this country; thirdly, they are likely to make the balance of Payments Crisis worse and not better; and, finally, these measures should not have been necessary at all.

First of all, the new Chancellor's measures are monstrously unfair; secondly, in my view, they are a breach of faith by the party opposite with the old-age pensioners of this country; thirdly, they are likely to make the balance of Payments Crisis worse and not better; and, finally, these measures should not have been necessary at all.

This balance of a Payments Crisis is a new one.

If the right hon. Gentleman is arguing about the financial clauses in the Paris Agreements, which are escape clauses in the event of a balance of Payment Crisis or for difficult economic reasons, that is one thing.

Hardly any hon. Member has touched upon the fact that this year, 1956, we have a balance of Payments Crisis, and we must be very careful before saddling our export industries with an extra burden.

I consider that the electricity industry, in common with other industries, would have been most adversely affected had the gap between savings and investment led at an early date to an even more severe balance of Payments Crisis.

Last year excess demand in this country, due to the electioneering Budget policy and reckless scrapping of controls, pushed this nation and the sterling area into an acute balance of Payments Crisis while almost the whole of the rest of the world was prosperous.

Therefore, in a temporary balance of Payments Crisis, we ought not to attack investment rather than consumption.

It is a burden, but I must remind hon. Members that we had no balance of Payments Crisis two years ago - in fact, we had a surplus - when the proportionate expenditure on defence was much larger.

The reason, surely, is that this country has committed itself, by a decision of all political parties, to a policy of maintaining a very high level of activity and employment in a country where an excessive level of employment or activity leads inevitably to a balance of Payments Crisis.

He said that in order to protect this nation and the sterling area from a balance of Payments Crisis, we must reserve the right to impose quantitative restrictions - quotas.

It would be extremely dangerous if we got into a position in which we had to rely even more than the Chancellor relies at present on deflationary means of preventing a balance of Payments Crisis.

There is no doubt whatsoever that this country - and it is admitted on both sides, I think, that it is from this country that the main capital for investment in the Commonwealth Territories must come - now faces a very serious balance of Payments Crisis and that we are unlikely to have any substantial sums left over for overseas investment at all, including investment in the Commonwealth.

The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) mentioned earlier in his speech that the country was suffering from a balance of Payments Crisis.

By deciding to check the balance of Payments Crisis by a general credit squeeze, by the blind man using a bludgeon, as the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby) described it recently, and not by any selective controls, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made it inevitable that production would go down and that investment would flag.

Because of two legacies inherited from the Labour Administration - the rearmament legacy, on which the right hon. Member for Huyton split from his right hon. and hon. Friends, and the balance of Payments Crisis, which united them all in an attitude of retreat.

Is there to be another upsurge of imports of raw materials and semi-manufactures, such as we had under the Lord Privy Seal in 1955, and Another Payments Crisis?

If we are to take off our coats and fight this battle of the balance of Payments Crisis, the car manufacturers must say "Goodbye" to the hopes of selling half a million extra cars on the home market every year.

Does he realise that essential capital investment will provoke another severe balance of Payments Crisis unless there is a very large increase in exports?

What guarantee is there that we shall not run into the import boom and the balance of Payments Crisis of two years ago?

It has been the way the Government chose to get out of the danger of a balance-of-Payments Crisis, an import crisis.

We have to do something to discourage the less essential things and to encourage the more essential, like steel, machine tools and other useful investments, if we are to be able to go forward without this sucking in of imports all over the place and the consequent balance-of-Payments Crisis.

Was it not followed by an enormous increase in imports of sheet steel, and was that not one of the major reasons for the balance of Payments Crisis later in the year?

Once we start on expansion, once we start the thing going again, how does the Chancellor plan to avoid the balance of Payments Crisis which we had when this happened previously?

I think it historically true, if we review the history of the last ten years, that, however desirable liberalisation may be in theory, a dose of liberalisation of trade, at any rate in the short run, is always followed by a balance of Payments Crisis; the balance of payments crisis gives rise to retrenchment; retrenchment gives rise to a credit squeeze; the credit squeeze seems to give rise to higher rates of interest, and, in the long run, to less investment in the Colonies.

In spite of a national income of £20,000 million, we need only a 1 per cent, movement, a movement of £200 million, in the wrong direction in some of these, and we have an acute balance of Payments Crisis.

I think that the Government's borrowing this year has been sufficient to avoid a serious balance of Payments Crisis this year, but surely the Government will agree - indeed, the Chancellor spoke in these terms in the Budget debat - that the situation is still such that we cannot afford to relax in any measures that are needed to strengthen our balance of payments surplus.

It is possible that events overseas can cause a very marked drop in employment, and a serious balance of Payments Crisis might well cause a massive decrease in imports and a resulting massive increase in unemployment here.

The cause for concern is neither industrial stagnation nor a balance of Payments Crisis.

But if it is simply due to the re-expansion of industry after a period of stagnation, it is then certainly not a cure for inflation, unless, first, we have no trouble about our balance of payments, and we do not get what the Chancellor has warned us about, namely, a situation where, as production expands, imports increase and exports do not rise correspondingly, so that we are back again with a balance of Payments Crisis.

He went on:The cause for concern is neither industrial stagnation nor a balance of Payments Crisis".

Then we get a balance-of-Payments Crisis.

That is why we now alternate between rises in production, which throw us into a balance of Payments Crisis, and a few months' respite from balance of payments crisis achieved through stagnating production.

If we cannot get raw materials, we will indeed have mass unemployment, and if we have inflation to a sufficient degree followed by a balance of Payments Crisis we shall not get the necessary raw materials.

Despite these controls, the Labour Party had the devaluation of the £ and a major balance of Payments Crisis.

The right hon. Gentleman himself said that the increase in the Bank Rate was effective as a temporary measure to meet a balance of Payments Crisis, but no one has ever suggested that a 7 per cent.

We might have a situation of acute demand-inflation, where prices were rising very rapidly, there was a balance of Payments Crisis, and the additional outpouring of money from the banks or from the Government or private spending was leading only to depletion of stocks or the piling up of orders.

I must remind him - because he referred to my right hon. Friend and talked of a lack of candour - that before the crisis of 1951 when he was Chancellor, although I have searched the records, I have found no record of any publicly announced policy to deal with the impending balance of Payments Crisis other than a small reduction in imports of dollar cheese.

We need to have an adequate volume of purchasing power to maintain full activity, but we must not go so far as to have inflation and a balance of Payments Crisis.

Does not this indicate that the recent balance of Payments Crisis was due largely to the flight of private capital into non-sterling areas, and that the real spanner in the machinery is not wage increases but the notion of Conservative freedom applied to exchange control?

On top of that, unhappily, with the Government's present economic policy we are menaced by the constant possibility of some serious balance of Payments Crisis which might cause serious unemployment again.

Sometimes it has been a balance of Payments Crisis and sometimes it has been an exchange crisis, but always it has been a crisis.

Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us why, if the 1951 position was the most severe post-war balance of Payments Crisis, the Lord Privy Seal needed only a year of restraint to escape from it, whereas we have now had three years of stagnation and we show no sign of escaping?

But, if it is simply due to the re-expansion of industry after a period of stagnation, it is then certainly not a cure for inflation, unless, first, we have no trouble about our balance of payments, and we do not got what the Chancellor has warned us about, namely, a situation where, as production expands, imports increase and exports do not rise correspondingly, so that we are back again with a balance of Payments Crisis".

We wish to speed up and resume expansion, but the conditions for doing so are that it should not lead to a return to inflation and it should not lead to another balance of Payments Crisis.

When the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) plunged into deflation, he really was in difficulties - we were up against a serious balance of Payments Crisis.

Yesterday, the President of the Board of Trade asked: if production is expanded, where do imports come from, and what about a balance of Payments Crisis?

Yet that is the inevitable consequence of the policy advocated by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and we would get right away a fresh balance of Payments Crisis.

We think they would have precisely the opposite effect, to a point that would bring on ale most serious inflation and a balance of Payments Crisis again.

We have been told that the real needs for depressing production really stem from the fears of a balance of Payments Crisis.

Right hon. Gentlemen say that, with expansion, the demand for imports will shoot up and there will be a balance of Payments Crisis, to be averted only if we have import controls, raw material allocations, rationing of materials, higher export cost, and so forth.

If they had not ploughed back profits, we might have had a balance of Payments Crisis with Monaco, and perhaps it was as well that the money remained in Dublin.

Immediately, we would get a balance of Payments Crisis.

It was able to liberalise trade and take the chance of increased production without the nagging fear all the time of a balance of Payments Crisis.

To increase production at a time of a pause in world economic expansion would lead only to a balance of Payments Crisis and inflation at home.

There was far less danger of expansion involving us in a balance of Payments Crisis at that moment than there is now.

I think that he genuinely believes in expansion, but, of course, his trouble was that under Tory freedom, without controls, expansion means inflation and a balance-of-Payments Crisis.

But clearly it would also lead to a return of inflation, a balance of Payments Crisis and a run on the reserves.

The policy of controls set out by the Labour Party, both in documents and in speeches, cannot possibly prevent inflation and cannot possibly prevent a balance of Payments Crisis if a Government is determined to pursue inflationary policies.

If we went into a recession with the economy wobbling, teetering on the brink of an exchange or balance of Payments Crisis, it would be quite impossible to take the reflationary measures which have been open to my right hon. Friend.

which bears in that way on the retirement pensions, and leads to a balance of Payments Crisis of that nature?

To meet this heavy extra expense a Labour Chancellor would have so to inflate the economy - and, indeed, the Opposition in their programme have promised to do so by £1,700 million a year - that he would run into a balance of Payments Crisis, just as the party opposite did in 1947, 1949 and 1951.

I have not in mind precisely what I said in reply to the intervention, but it was to the effect that it is no use expanding production if the concomitants are a balance of Payments Crisis abroad and very rapidly rising prices at home.

The supreme test of this Budget, as the Paymaster-General was saying, is whether or not it can achieve steady expansion without a balance of Payments Crisis, without inflation.

Would my right hon. Friend agree that if hon. Members opposite were in power and had their way they would so inflate the economy that they would run us into a balance of Payments Crisis?

It may well be that we shall have another balance of Payments Crisis or another upsurge ofinflation.

The only alternative is the Conservative policy of moderating any dangers of a balance of Payments Crisis or inflation by moderating the rate of growth and, of course, by depressing investment, too.

I would remind the House of what the Government did when this country ran into a balance of Payments Crisis.

We shall have exactly the same position as we had in 1955 when the enormous increase in sheet steel imports was a major cause of the balance of Payments Crisis of that year.

If we had another balance of Payments Crisis, as we had in 1957, and if the Government dealt with it as they did then, by instituting the credit squeeze and a high Bank Rate, there would be the most terrible consequences on the employment of youth.

Professor Carter, writing recently in another booklet called The Three Banks Review, said quite positively that the penalty for expansion without a firm base of exports is a balance of Payments Crisis.

We do not believe in rushing ahead as fast as they did and running back into another period of inflation and a balance of Payments Crisis.

My hon. Friends and I would like to ask the Economic Secretary whether the Government's monetary policy is operating under a diagnosis that we are in an inflationary situation or under a diagnosis that we face a difficult balance of Payments Crisis.

On the other hand, the Government have shown by the decision to increase taxation and by their declared readiness to use monetary policy, that they are determined not to allow the economy to drift once again into a condition of excess demand, inflation, and balance of Payments Crisis.

If we really are heading for a balance of Payments Crisis, action should be taken.

He has presided over a year in which profits and dividends have steadily gained at the expense of wages, in which gilt-edged prices have fallen to the lowest levels ever, in which the gold reserve has fallen and sterling balances risen, and in which we have slid into a balance of Payment Crisis with the most favourable terms of trade ever known.

Therefore, any action of the Government which increased the total volume of demand would be bound to run us into a balance of Payments Crisis once more, and I do not believe that we would get the thanks of the pensioners, or anybody else, if we disturbed the present prosperity, expansion and price stability.

The point with which I was dealing is that not merely are we faced with an inadequate rate of long-term growth because of a low level of investment but we are unable to make full use of the growth which would be possible for us, given our present industrial horsepower, because the balance of our industry is such that we have a far greater liability to run into a balance of Payments Crisis as soon as we move into an expansionary phase than have most of our trade rivals.

A balance of Payments Crisis is a very serious matter for any country, but for this country, as banker for the sterling area, it would be a disaster.

But is not the whole trouble due to the fact that the Government have left themselves practically no weapon of control except a higher interest rate and, therefore, that whenever we have a balance of Payments Crisis the Government's only remedy is to slow down investment, both public and private?

Within two years of our adopting an intelligent imperial trading system the value of the £ sterling has risen from 3·20 dollars to 5·5 dollars and we were not having a balance of Payments Crisis or a dollar reserve crisis every two years as we have them now.

In a commentary on the figures The Times wrote: "If industrial expansion is examined over the past decade Britain's performance becomes even more discouraging"— with a low rate of growth in production and a very modest rate of investment, probably because in the post-war balance of Payments Crisis investment-demand was the first sector of demand to be restrained by controls.

In a commentary on the figures The Times wrote:If industrial expansion is examined over the past decade Britain's performance becomes even more discouraging" - with a low rate of growth in production and a very modest rate of investment, probably because in the post-war balance of Payments Crisis investment-demand was the first sector of demand to be restrained by controls.

Expansion at too rapid a rate will land us in a balance of Payments Crisis, and it is extremely difficult to escape from the resultant spiral.

What is wrong with our economy that every time when we look like getting into our stride we hit a balance of Payment Crisis and have to slow up?

The greatest single danger seems to be the possibility of this country becoming involved yet again in a balance of Payments Crisis, this time by reason of happenings in the American economy.

That is why the concern of the United States about exporting is no more than marginal, and the fact that the United States is at present facing a balance of Payments Crisis is irrelevant in this connection, because its balance of payments problem has nothing to do with an adverse balance of trade.

The whole of this story is another proof that if we are not prepared to have any planning at all, we cannot have expansion in this country without getting into a balance of Payments Crisis.

But unless production goes up at least as much as money incomes rise, prices must rise and we shall have a balance of Payments Crisis.

There is a balance of Payments Crisis now.

Indeed, what is the Bank Rate for but to attract foreign funds to this country and to stave off a balance of Payments Crisis.

Every time we export £100 million or £200 million more capital to the Colonies it becomes part of the balance of Payments Crisis which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen immediately use as a reason for a vote of censure.

Then a balance of Payments Crisis is upon us and the shutters go up - credit squeeze, wages freeze, higher taxes, social service cuts, a tight hold on investment in the publicly-owned industries and the rest.

We have been over-exporting capital and, as a result, so soon as industry gets under way, we find that we have a balance of Payments Crisis.

If inflation were to cause a balance of Payments Crisis all sorts of desirable projects would have to be cut.

rise in manufactured imports which took place in that year, and of the balance of Payments Crisis from which we are now suffering and which is inhibiting any further expansion.

The biggest single cause of the balance of Payments Crisis that the Chancellor spoke about seems to us to exist in the tremendous rise in imports in the last year or so.

We have lacked growth and we have always been on the edge of a balance of Payments Crisis.

It has also been suggested that because of the balance of Payments Crisis which may well develop in the autumn with the present trend of the growth in the economy of this country, these regulators should be used, and used promptly, by the Chancellor.

Ten years ago we again ran into a balance of Payments Crisis.

The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, and the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lansdale, I think, assumed that this situation is already with us - I do not think that it is - a situation in which demand, in their view, is rapidlybecoming excessive and that in consequence of this we shall run into a balance of Payments Crisis in the autumn, or at least that sterling will come under increasing pressure.

On the short-term economic policies, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition had something to say about the disastrous effect on our affairs over the last ten years of the way we react 1101 to every successive exchange or balance of Payments Crisis.

We are all familiar with the theoretical argument that if we expand too fast at home, imports go up, exports go down, we get into a balance of Payments Crisis and we must then clamp down.

In the early 'fifties, when we ran into a similar balance of Payments Crisis, it was often possible to put it down to temporary factors, ill luck, and so on.

However, these figures of an expanding economy at home and greater prosperity do not match the balance of Payments Crisis which has been the basis of this debate.

I do not share the view, which is often repeated, that this balance of Payments Crisis is an inevitable situation which will recur and recur.

We all know that since the war our greatest problem has been the recurrent balance of Payment Crisis.

Whether or not this is true, the figures are there for all to see, and we can only draw the conclusion that if imports had remained at their 1959 level when they were running at a high level, and exports have pursued a slow and painful upward climb, the Chancellor would not have been faced by a balance of Payments Crisis last year, with all the attendant evil of the pay pause and constriction that we have had in industrial output.

I fully accept all that the hon. Member says on this, but if this leads directly, as it has done in this case, to a balance of Payments Crisis and a pay pause, we have to ask ourselves whether the removal of all these restrictions was in fact justified.

The hon. Gentleman's argument would have been valid if the restrictions would have avoided the necessity of the pay pause or the balance of Payments Crisis.

You will have a balance of Payments Crisis on your hands in five minutes".

If there is excessive demand in this country, a balance of Payments Crisis is certain, and I can think of no industrial country in recent years which has had a balance of payments crisis except when it has had inflation at home.

There was a sharp rise in prices, and a balance of Payments Crisis.

Does not my hon. Friend think that a balance of Payments Crisis might be caused by a lack of reserves rather than by the reasons he gave?

If we allow demand to run ahead of supply, we have no hope of achieving our aims, because we will run straight into a balance of Payments Crisis.

But, as soon as we got a period of rapid growth, there was always a balance of Payments Crisis, and the Government knocked the whole thing on the head and a lot of the investment plans of industry appeared inevitably to be frustrated.

After the next election, however, any Chancellor could say that the position was different and the country was facing a balance of Payments Crisis, which is a fair bet, as happens every two years or so under the present Government and sometimes even twice a year.

We have made the necessary readjustment which had to be made as a result of last summer's balance of Payments Crisis.

If costs rise exports will fall and the weight of imports will correspondingly increase and lead to a balance of Payments Crisis, so that the rise in prices will inflict great injury on those whose incomes are in fixed terms or cannot be readily advanced to meet the rising prices.

Unbridled capacity investment in a boom means spare capacity immediately we run into a balance of Payments Crisis.

I shall not discuss the essential domestic precondition, which is to strengthen our own economy first, not only because this would increase our bargaining power but because to go into the Common Market with an economy weaker than all the others would condemn us to the new balance of Payments Crisis and either devaluation or permanent stagnation.

I think that we in this country will have to be very careful not to let public expenditure grow so rapidly that we run into another balance of Payments Crisis owing to the type of pressure on sterling which we had only about twelve months ago.

We have hardly finished applauding the Ministers and economists concerned before we are told that the country is on the verge of a balance-of-Payments Crisis, that we have to draw in our horns, that inflation is rampant, that the £ is going down, and that nobody has confidence in us nor have we confidence in ourselves.

It is equally true that under this Government the Chancellor must keep a high level of unemployment or risk a balance of Payments Crisis.

They know perfectly well that we were in a balance-of-Payments Crisis and that the £ was in danger.

How soon after all this rigmarole do they expect the next balance of Payments Crisis?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is worried, wondering when the next balance of Payments Crisis is to come.

How soon will it be before we have a balance of Payments Crisis?

The lesson of a balance of Payments Crisis preventing manufacturers from using all the resources has been learned.

My general view is that although the Budget is acceptable as a short-term method of getting expansion this year, and although we may get there and Ihope that we get through this year and have temporary expansion without a balance of Payments Crisis, the Budget contributes practically nothing to the solution of the critical long-run problem, which is that of getting a 5 per cent.

If we say that to avoid a balance of Payments Crisis we shall do what we have often had to do before, lower the base of our productivity and our growth, we are going back to a policy which we have already found to be unsatisfactory.

It is an implicit admission that the progress which has been made is insufficient and that all that he can do is to run into the election promising to do all sorts of things without being certain that he has the means to achieve them and without having taken any steps to ensure that within a year or eighteen months we shall not come up against a balance of Payments Crisis in which the outflow of money will have to be stopped.

The basic reason for our failure as a nation to grow as other nations have grown in the last few years is that every time we have a boom it ends in a balance of Payments Crisis.

Of course, we shall have an investment boom next spring - this is accepted byeverybody - but it will be superimposed on an economy which is already running very flat out and the most likely result is that it will push us into a balance of Payments Crisis and the whole thing will be cut back again.

Whichever Government are in power, economic growth will be threatened by one thing alone - the possibility of a balance-of-Payments Crisis.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman, with his great experience of the problem of perceiving an incipient balance of Payments Crisis, persuade one of his right hon. Friends to make a statement - or perhaps make one himself - so that the House and the country can be put in picture?

Since the other bouts of expansion we have had in the last 12 years have been promptly followed by wage restraint, credit restriction and a balance of Payments Crisis, would the Prime Minister say what it is that makes the present period of expansion different from all the others?

Is he not aware that we are now fast running into a balance of Payments Crisis which is particularly illustrated by the fact that a large part of our imports in January was due not to stocking up, but to finished manufactured goods?

that they have not during those years so strengthened the economy that we could face more easily and with greater equanimity nine months of boom without dire speculations going on about whether we are likely, in the autumn, to enter into a balance of Payments Crisis.

I agree that he is taking, whichever word he cares to choose, a chance or a risk, but the criticism I make is not that he is taking a chance in what is admittedly a risky situation, but that over the preceding 13 years the Government have not steered us further away from the financial rocks than we are today; that they have not during those years so strengthened the economy that we could face more easily and with greater equanimity nine months of boom without dire speculations going on about whether we are likely, in the autumn, to enter into a balance of Payments Crisis.

Whenever we have had an expanding economy, whenever the wheels of industry have begun to turn and we have had full employment, within a short time we have had inflation and a balance of Payments Crisis on our hands.

I do not think that I am doing the Chancellor an injustice if I say that what he said about the balance of payments was, roughly, that there is a risk that we might have a balance of Payments Crisis, but that he is prepared, at this stage, to try to ride things out and hope for the best.

of cheese a week; and away from a balance of Payments Crisis.

Professor Paish, in the Statist, published on 20th February, showed that in 1951 there was no spare capacity at all, that there were sharply rising prices, a balance of Payments Crisis and falling output.

The fall in unemployment in the North-East has been due to the very rapid rate of industrial expansion in the country as a whole over the last few months - a rate of expansion which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has repeatedly said we cannot maintain without running into a balance of Payments Crisis.

Inflation is serious, either if it is here and only here and not in other countries, so that we have a balance-of-Payments Crisis, or if it degenerates into galloping inflation, as it could do.

Indeed, the Tory Government have achieved a rather remarkable combination of putting us in a position of an enormous balance of Payments Crisis without even the promised boom, because the fact is that industrial production has been stagnant since the beginning of 1964.

Every time we achieve anything like full employment we run into a balance of Payments Crisis.

If we are to abandon any one of these projects, the only thing with which it is legitimate to replace them is not something for the moment, not something in the short-term, not a device to get rid of some balance of Payments Crisis, but another project considered better in exactly the same class.

I am not sure to what extent any curtailment of existing projects will help our balance of Payments Crisis.

The only possible argument for saying that this would help in a balance of Payments Crisis would be if it were believed that the total of demand inside this country needed restraining in order to restrain the demand for imports.

Our desire and determination is not merely to solve this balance of Payments Crisis but to prevent it recurring, and to break out of the dreary pattern which has bedevilled our economic performance in the past.

I have listened particularly to hon. Members opposite in the hope of ascertaining from them whether or not there is a balance of Payments Crisis.

But we cannot get the agreement of the Opposition on whether there is or is not a balance of Payments Crisis.

Ever since the recent election campaign began, we have heard a great deal about a balance of Payments Crisis.

It is one of the main factors in the balance of Payments Crisis.

The Budget is right economically because it eases the balance of Payments Crisis by discouraging imports and encouraging exports.

They had a meeting at which they complained about it and said, "We must be more vigorous in future", so they cast aside the under- taking which had been given by the former Chancellor immediately after the Government came to power, namely, that in his view the Government were fully justified in going ahead with the proposals which they made about the surcharges, and I imagine that if the right hon. Member for Barnet thought on 4th November that the Government were fully justified in imposing these surcharges to deal with an extremely serious balance of Payments Crisis he would not be so foolish as to come along a couple of days later and say that the surcharges should be limited to the period ending in March.

They have never been taken in connection with a balance of Payments Crisis before.

During the period when the right hon. Gentleman was negotiating to get into the Common Market there was not a balance of Payments Crisis all the time.

The cause of the balance of Payments Crisis is primarily the fact that we cannot export cheaply enough to be profitable.

If the points of order constantly raised bythe hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) were currency, we should not have a balance of Payments Crisis.

But for this futile business the position would have fallen into equilibrium, as we said during the election, but because of this evil measure the balance of Payments Crisis may be more dangerous than ever in a few months' time.

The right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), when he was excluded from the Government in 1957, during a previous balance of Payments Crisis, was described as "a local difficulty".

I hope, however, that despite the utterly frivolous and incompetent manner in which hon. Members opposite have conducted their opposition to the Bill, despite their blundering from one mare's nest to another, despite their utterly contemptible attacks upon my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who yesterday put the case brilliantly and skilfully and who gave right hon. Members opposite exactly the retorts they deserved - despite all this, I hope the Government will not be distracted from listening to the still, small voice of reason which urges them to understand that the enlargement of the numbers of the Government is something which they should watch carefully and that, as soon as they have been able to put our balance of Payments Crisis in order and deal with all the other disasters that were left on their doorstep, they will turn their minds to this matter, look up the speech which I am now making, remove the parts of it which I had to interpolate to squash the Opposition, but recognise the wisdom of what I say.

We do not need a balance-of-Payments Crisis to remind us that as a great trading nation our interests are world wide.

I hope he will accept that people abroad are not very much interested in whether it is a Labour balance of payments or a Conservative balance of Payments Crisis.

As my hon. Friend the Mem-ber for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) said so well, we are facing a situation today, in terms of the balance of Payments Crisis, which is even more serious than the difficulties faced in 1961.

We have a picture of gross military expenditure overseas accounting for roughly £350 million a year, and the plain fact cannot be too often emphasised that such expenditure is throwing on the British people ever heavier burdens which are reflected in the balance of Payments Crisis, resulting in the need for desperate measures.

This cost is vital in our balance-of-Payments Crisis.

I should have thought that one thing which 13 years of Tory rule had established was that the strain on our balance of payments in an uncontrolled economy got us into one balance of Payments Crisis after another and left us no chance whatever of developing investments sufficient to provide a 4 per cent.

I think that probably my right hon. Friend had in mind the balance of Payments Crisis of 1957, rather than 1955.

Would the right hon. Gentleman now care to remind us of the import-export position of steel in 1951, when it was nationalised and when we had a Socialist Government and the worst balance of Payments Crisis in our history?

The point which I have consistently made is that, with our military bases overseas, we cannot expect to meet our balance of Payments Crisis or to get on with the job of modernising this country and giving the people the sort of housing and social services which they require.

There is no question that we shall not be able to increase our annual national product and our exports to correct our balance of Payments Crisis while this vast expenditure on the Navy and the other two Services is spent largely on unproductive work.

This was at the beginning of the pay pause and in the middle of a balance of Payments Crisis, when the Conservatives were taking things out, to some extent, on education.

Because British industry failed at the same time to increase its exports and maintain our share of world trade in order to pay for our increased imports, we are once again in a most severe balance of Payments Crisis.

None the less, the balance-of-Payments Crisis, the death of Prime Minister Nehru, the growing pressure from China - which is not only felt on the Chinese-Indian border but throughout the whole of Asia - these factors, and others, are leading to a growing introduction of private capital and of capitalist influence, and a move away from the type of Socialist developmentthat we on this side want to assist India in attaining.

These are consistent figures on average, year in and year out, and during these 10 years we have now run into our third balance of Payments Crisis and we cannot feel that this is a situation which we can just regard as something which can be dealt with by a mere temporary expedient.

If there is no recession in spending, inevitably they face an acute balance of Payments Crisis.

I do not want to go back to last October and November, when there were mutual recriminations about the sudden balance of Payments Crisis.

The Prime Minister: I particularly remember that in the very grave balance of Payments Crisis which followed Suez, when we were fully opposed to the Suez operation but when it was a question of strengthening sterling, we from the Opposition Box expressed our full support for any measures to save sterling, despite the fact that we were completely opposed to the policy which had led to the crisis in the case of Suez.

Is the Prime Minister aware that many well-informed people think that the balance of Payments Crisis may develop more severely in September and that further measures may be necessary beyond those to be announced this afternoon?

I particularly remember that in the very grave balance of Payments Crisis which followed Suez, when we were fully opposed to the Suez operation but when it was a question of strengthening sterling, we from the Opposition Box expressed our full support for any measures to save sterling, despite the fact that we were completely opposed to the policy which had led to the crisis in the case of Suez.

Whereas the previous Government had one method, and one method only, of dealing with the balance of Payments Crisis, namely, blind general deflation, this Government have adopted a far more selective, discriminating attitude.

But not once - at any rate, not in the Press comment which I have seen - did he direct the nation's attention to the basic balance of Payments Crisis which he knew it was facing.

Time and time again, we contracted only when we had a balance of Payments Crisis or expanded only when unemployment reached a high level.

I believe that if the Government relax their present inflationary measures, in the immediate future we shall have a grave balance of Payments Crisis.

that they did it on purpose; that they left the biggest balance of Payments Crisis in history all according to their plan.

The right hon. Gentleman said that it was all arranged by his colleagues; that they did it on purpose; that they left the biggest balance of Payments Crisis in history all according to their plan.

As we have heard, the Leader of the Opposition is still not willing to accept his party's responsibility for the balance of Payments Crisis of the autumn, 1964.

This must be done so that we do not continually face the problem that every time we take the lid off the economy and permit the rate of economic development to increase, we immediately face a balance-of-Payments Crisis.

In this tragically serious situation only a high level of personal savings can prevent a possible drift towards another period of speculation against sterling and all the horrors of a balance of Payments Crisis with which this country is all too familiar.

They seemed unimpressed, but I do not think it can be stressed too often that the reasons for the taxation measures were the consequence of the balance of Payments Crisis at the end of 1964, and notably the surcharge.

The answer is that, as the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, the measures that we had to take last year to deal with the balance of Payments Crisis, which had essentially to be short-term measures because there were no other weapons left to us by the departing Government, were such that they did, and inevitably had to, lead to some restriction in production.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that we on this side of the House at least are interested in solving the balance of Payments Crisis?

He predicted a very heavy increase in taxation in the Budget, a continuing balance of Payments Crisis, and rising prices.

For example, the 1963 expansion, like the previous upswing in 1959–60, led within less than two years to a serious balance of Payments Crisis.

One of our most eminent economists, Lord Robbins, said two or three weeks ago that unless within a measurable period of time we get equilibrium on current account - and it is that, of course, the current account, which matters - inevitably the balance-of-Payments Crisis will recur with increased violence.

It is so easy to solve any balance of Payment Crisis or economic problems merely by applying the screw and forcing people out of work.

The Committee will not need to be reminded of the unprecedented severity of the balance of Payments Crisis which the nation faced in 1964 at the end of a very long and tedious period.

The basic problem in this country is that although we are an inventive nation and although our businessmen are not as stupid nor our working men as lazy as some people would have us believe, every time industrial investment in this country really gets going, the economy overheats, imports rise and so we have another balance of Payments Crisis on our hands and a consequent deflationary Budget along the lines of the one presented yesterday.

The difficulty of the right hon. Gentleman and of his hon. Friends is that they left an economy of inadequate investment and insufficient growth and one with a recurring and ever-worsening balance of Payments Crisis.

If all industries had an export record equal to that of the pottery industry, we should not have a balance of Payments Crisis.

Speaking in London on 18th May this year at the annual meeting of the newly formed association of employers' and manufacturers' organisations, he is quoted as saying:Until we permanently solve the problem of using our manpower with the maximum practical degree of efficiency we shall stagger from balance of Payments Crisis to crisis.

He wanted to avoid provoking a recession in 1967 and creating a balance of Payments Crisis in 1966.

We are in a chronic economic and balance of Payments Crisis, and this industry which has been selected for taxation is the greatest dollar earner that we possess.

I have always felt that, with Europe ahead of us in some form or another, we are working this way whether we like it or not, and in a chronic balance-of-Payments Crisis which whichwe permanently live, it is crazy not to make provision for this in agriculture.

As is well known, one of the causes of our serious balance of Payments Crisis has been the considerable increase in imports.

In view of the Prime Minister's public commendation of the increased productivity of the agriculture industry, will he set up talks immediately with the leaders of that industry to increase production in view of the assistance that that could be to the present balance of Payments Crisis?

If the hon. Gentleman's philosophy succeeds, after the men have come home and their bases been demolished, can he say that we will never again have a balance of Payments Crisis?

Those particular figures, which really I inherited from Sir Walter Monckton, were one of the many signs which we could see at the time were leading us into inflation and into a balance of Payments Crisis, which came in 1957.

160, in my name and the names of more than 100 hon. and right hon. Members, asking that the agricultural industry should have greater opportunities for production in view of the balance of Payments Crisis?

There is the balance of Payments Crisis, on the one hand, and the prices policy crisis, on the other.

If we would rather control wages than imports, then we are heading for a further balance of Payments Crisis.

That leads to the all-too-familiar sequence that goes on into a balance of Payments Crisis.

Much of the trouble arises from the balance-of-Payments Crisis, which is one of the root causes of this crisis.

Professor Brinley Thomas went on to say - this is not, perhaps, so happy - Recently, however, there have been signs, quite apart from the impact of the balance of Payments Crisis, that the Welsh economy is running into turbulence".

Third amongst the lessons is that the fact that we are only beginning to emerge from a serious balance of Payments Crisis need not necessarily make us apologeticin our approach.

Confronted by a balance of Payments Crisis the party opposite sought to stave off further debt by means of cutting home demand and instituting a credit squeeze and a pay pause - and the results were always the same.

The real balance of Payments Crisis is not a trading problem alone.

If one reads Shonfield and many other economists, they all make the point that it is possible to take over control of our overseas investments and sell a percentage of them to overcome a balance of Payments Crisis.

It is argued that our alternatives are not realistic; that they have no immediate bearing on the balance of Payments Crisis.

If the share of the public sector increases and investment increases and consumption stays the same, the only way in which the accounts can be balanced is by another balance of Payments Crisis which we cannot stand.

They are significant only when seen against the background of a "phoney" balance of Payments Crisis.

Does he not know that there is a balance of Payments Crisis?

The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) said that in this case 120 people might seek back payment for 10 months, and then we should have this flood of people, with disastrous effects on our economy, in August, when all 120 of them, with their 10 months' back pay, would create a balance of Payments Crisis.

Mrs. Renée Short asked the President of the Board of Trade what proposals he has for the control of selected imports in order to prevent a recurrence of the balance of Payments Crisis at the end of this emergency.

The big difference between the decisions envisaged and reported to the House in last year's White Paper and some of the decisions which I have indicated to the House on recent occasions is that, because of the balance of Payments Crisis last July, the Government decided to accelerate many of the redeployments which they envisaged by up to two years compared with the 1969–70 target.

While we are still in the middle of an international balance of Payments Crisis, from which we hope to emerge this year or next year, we certainly could not advocate deliberately in such a situation a policy of paying in foreign currency for imports of steel.

If so, does not he agree that this is a most shortsighted and socially undesirable way of solving a phoney balance of Payments Crisis?

The Reddaway Report may at first sight confirm some of the Chancellor's analysis and shows that short-term restrictions may be reasonable in a balance of Payments Crisis, but this problem should be seen in the wider picture of international capital flows to which long-term capital from the United Kingdom makes such an important contribution.

This would only lead, I think we all agree, to a further balance of Payments Crisis.

If that is true, it also led, of course, to the balance of Payments Crisis in 1964.

unemployment figure to solve the balance of Payments Crisis or get rid of our commitments east of Suez or elsewhere, I want us to get rid of our commitments east of Suez.

Nevertheless, nothing would do so much at this juncture to keep the export-led boom going and enable us to expand to capacity without a balance of Payments Crisis.

All that we do is to hit investment and thereby ensure that we sow the seeds of the next balance of Payments Crisis with the one that we are trying to escape from now.

No dollar expenditure is involved, no balance of Payments Crisis is threatened as a result.

The question we still face today, and will face on each Amendment dealing with this kind of matter, is how we have that steady run-up to a higher rate of growth without running into another balance of Payments Crisis in the next few weeks or months.

Nobody has ever disputed in relation to overseas investment that the short-term curbs could well be justified in a moment of balance of Payment Crisis as a means of temporarily staunching the flow of investment overseas.

But while they felt it was generally the right course for a country like Britain to take, Neddy members agreed that short-term limitations during a balance of Payments Crisis were unavoidable.

The objects in mind in making productivity, prices and incomes the subject of policy are, first, that we may be able to protect our balance of payments against the danger of inflation and be able to embark on economic growth without fear of its being arrested by a balance of Payments Crisis; secondly, that we may be able to give some help to those who are the worst sufferers if there is a free-for-all in prices and incomes - that is to say, those who are the lowest paid and those who, by reason of age, are not working and are on small fixed incomes.

We do not face any great balance of Payments Crisis nor any great oil supply crisis, but we do face a very real transport problem.

Certainly, if the Chancellor wereto change his mind and to begin to reflate the economy to any serious extent, as the hon. Member for Macclesfield has just been recommending, and I agree with him on that one point, there is no doubt that Another Payments Crisis would be the almost immediate result.

First, people frequently suggest that because of the present economic situation and balance of Payments Crisis it is difficult for Britain to continue with aid at the same level.

Here, however, in the midst of a balance-of-Payments Crisis, the Government are deliberately setting out to force our manufacturers to rely more and more on nationalised transport.

We can float off in some ways the Merthyrs and the Ebbw Vales on the tide of general reflation but it does not deal with their problems and it precipitates the next balance of Payments Crisis.

It is our ninth balance of Payments Crisis since the war.

They may be able to avoid a balance of Payments Crisis.

Some of their programmes in the period 1963–64 largely precipitated the balance of Payments Crisis.

What we had to face this autumn, as right hon. Gentlemen have to face time after time when they were in office, was whether we could maintain, not for a few months only, but year in and year out, an expansion in production, and full employment, without again running into a balance of Payments Crisis.

Having regard to the enormous sums spent every year by this country on imported oil, will he bear in mind that, if it were not for the large increase of oil imports permitted by the last Conservative Government, there would be no balance of Payments Crisis this year?

there is a flood of imports and a balance of Payments Crisis, and we must return to deflation.

Every time we try to increase production we come up against the fundamental problem; there is a flood of imports and a balance of Payments Crisis, and we must return to deflation.

The Americans are having a financial and balance of Payments Crisis and it does not stop; it goes on and gets worse.

Will not he concede that the last National Plan had certain weaknesses, particularly its failure to take account of that most obvious contingency, the balance of Payments Crisis?

in G.D.P., the highest that we have ever had, and a year which also coincided with the worst balance of Payments Crisis that we have had.

I have reached the point that, whenever I come through those doors, I think of a balance of Payments Crisis.

There is no balance of Payments Crisis between California and Maine.

The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling), when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, believed that one could grow through the balance of Payments Crisis, and there was some evidence of this at the time.

Convention, and Article 19 provides the conditions justifying stringent measures when there is a balance of Payments Crisis.

If they had been able then to deal more firmly with the situation in Rhodesia and to take the right kind of action to cope with the balance of Payments Crisis, particularly in the case of devaluation, we should not be in some of the difficult crises we face every few weeks today.

Yet we still have this balance of Payments Crisis argument and this mismanagement of the economy argument thrown at us, which is what underlies the failure of the Secretary of State to be able to meet the local authorities' need.

The Payments Crisis and the growing tourist deficit in 1966 produced the travel allowance, which was damaging to sterling and undignified for every British person travelling abroad.

When the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) at the beginning of his speech suggested that the policies of my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) might produce a balance of Payments Crisis, my mind went back to the time when I succeeded him as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1951.

It is already far too late to meet the "Neddy" target for 1972–73, but it is not too late to start to carry out a policy which could lift us out of our balance of Payments Crisis.

Every part of our economy is suffering from the balance of Payments Crisis and the panic measures which the Government have adopted following it.

This somewhat confirms the view expressed by the present Home Secretary when he was a very new Chancellor of the Exchequer, in November, 1964 - that the country would not have had a balance of Payments Crisis were it not for the heavy cost of overseas military expenditure.

For the larger companies, I believe that it will mean a drastic cutback in manufacturing investment, thus preparing all the most suitable grounds for the next balance of Payment Crisis in a few years' time.

we could have it for one or two years as we have had it in the past and then get into a balance of Payments Crisis and have to stop it again.

I turn now to one of the main reasons why we have got into such difficulties and why it took us five years to get over an acute balance of Payments Crisis, whereas five months have been about the maximum before.

growth; we could have it for one or two years as we have had it in the past and then get into a balance of Payments Crisis and have to stop it again.

but this, done too fast, could be the short way to unemployment through a balance of Payments Crisis.

Of course - here I come to the point which my hon. Friend has just raised - the short way with unemployment would be to raise the level of demand in the economy; but this, done too fast, could be the short way to unemployment through a balance of Payments Crisis.

We know what happens to that hot money if the country hits a balance of Payments Crisis, for whatever reason.

and that this has led to the record export figures that are solving the balance of Payments Crisis left by the party opposite?

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that over the last four years there has been an enormous spurt in productivity and an enormous spurt in conscientiousness between management and men; and that this has led to the record export figures that are solving the balance of Payments Crisis left by the party opposite?

We are wise to be cautious, particularly after previous examples of an inflationary spiral followed by a balance of Payments Crisis.

It is no good pretending that we know how to get it, because it has eluded everybody since the end of the war, except at the cost of a severe balance of Payments Crisis.

We could rapidly reach another balance of Payments Crisis and further devaluation.

The right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson), then Prime Minister, was saying that it would lead to a balance of Payments Crisis just to import three Jumbo jets.

But all theseinjustices will arise in Britain whatever happens in the rest of the world, and, what is more, if we inflate faster than the rest of the world, as is happening now, we shall soon be in a balance of Payments Crisis.

That endangers even a large balance of payments surplus - as we have seen in the past - which leads us in due course into a balance of Payments Crisis and fromthat to the conclusion that it is therefore safer to keep the economy at half throttle.

As an official spokesman I am, perhaps, under some inhibitions and cannot entirely freely discuss the question of exchange rates, but my feeling has been for some time that, with our present level of unemployment and unused capacity, the need for expansion is such that if our expansion led to a danger, as it might, of a balance of Payments Crisis then, rather than avoid the expansion, we should not treat the rate as sacrosanct.

Unless we can do better than that, we shall be back in a balance of Payments Crisis very rapidly.

In the long term, the Government must plan ahead, not only for the time when a balance of Payments Crisis comes, as it will, but for the time when the next labour shortage arises, as that will happen, too.

Even more remarkable than this is the economic state of the United States, which began the 1960s with not very many economic problems and has finished up the decade with, simultaneously, a balance of Payments Crisis, severe inflation and heavy unemployment.

They would be certain that when the Government came up against the next balance of Payments Crisis they would resort to a credit squeeze and tough fiscal policies and would stop expansion.

The result under successive Governments has been that capacity shortages and shortages of skilled labour develop, the export drive from those key areas languishes, imports are sucked in, and a balance of Payment Crisis supervenes.

I do not think that we can rely on savings being as high as they were last year, and a lot of consumer demand may go on imports so that we will be back with the well-known trouble from which we have suffered since the war of a consumer-led boom and eventually a balance of Payments Crisis.

The great danger that the Chancellor has decided to run in his Budget judgment is that if we go for expansion like this in 1973–74 we may run into a grave balance of Payments Crisis.

Recent years are littered with examples of the part that iron and steel imports have played in every balance of Payments Crisis.

First of all, the balance of payments burden, which I will not attempt to value, but, obviously, it will be that much worse as a result of hidden devaluation of the £ or the floating exchange rate, and that will pose for a future Government of this country the problem of how to cope with the consequences of a balance of Payments Crisis.

It is because the Prime Minister's attempts to apply the philosophy on which he was elected to office have led the country into the most frightening conjunction of catastrophes since 1931, with mass unemployment on a scale we have not known since before the war, with industrial stagnation, with soaring prices and, what is more, with a balance of Payments Crisis.

In the event of a balance of Payments Crisis, would action to reimpose controls on capital movement in the Common Market be compatible with our Common Market obligations?

If we had had a fixed pound for the last seven months we would certainly have had a balance of Payments Crisis by now.

By throwing away any chance of making his counter-inflation policy work - and that is what he has done - the Chancellor faces the risk of having to introduce a tough Budget perhaps in the middle of the new balance-of-Payments Crisis predicted by outside observers, and certainly at a moment when all his prices and incomes controls are breaking down and he is compelled, whether he likes it or not, to introduce a much looser phase 3 policy than the tough policy for phase 2.

The Government's total failure to come to grips with the balance-of-Payments Crisis which has now developed was conspicuous and disturbing.

Indeed, I feel that by accepting the Common Market policies the Government have made the possibility of a balance of Payments Crisis in the autumn even more likely than otherwise might be the case, and a further devalution of our currency not only possible but probable.

Is he prepared to re-state on this occasion the undertaking he gave the House a year ago that he would not in a future balance of Payments Crisis sacrifice growth to an unrealistic parity?

The great majority of business men, whose confidence is just returning, need to know that the Government will not answer the next balance of Payments Crisis with the old squeeze-and-freeze measures.

We are running into a balance of Payments Crisis, and still we have skyrocketing inflation.

The one problem we do not face is a balance of Payments Crisis.

Candidly, it is a litle odd that at this time, particularly on this day when we are faced with the worst balance of Payments Crisis in our history, we should be discussing a Bill of such triviality.

The Government's main responsibility here is for the balance-of-Payments Crisis which they have helped to bring about by a reckless financial policy.

We have seen three crises over seven years: a balance of Payments Crisis, dealt with by devaluation, followed by deflation, leading to stagnation of the economy and thus unemployment.

Surely these articles were designed for the very economic circumstances we are facing today, a serious balance of Payments Crisis.

So grave were inflation and the balance of Payments Crisis that these alone were enough to compel the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make his statement yesterday.

Having now, at last, admitted - if not explicitly, at least implicitly - that there is a balance of Payments Crisis and a need to disinflate home demand, what does he do?

Since we now face the worst balance of Payments Crisis in the history of any country, surely the time has come to tell the Common Market that we can no longer bear the burden of the taxes on imported food, the net cost of our payments to the Community budget and the intolerable burden of Common Market membership on our overall balance of payments position.

But whatever method is used, we have to accept that the present Government will go heavily into debt because of the balance of Payments Crisis which they themselves have created.

How is it that we can do without £178 million worth of defence just because of a Payments Crisis?

We have inflation and the balance of Payments Crisis with an annual deficit, if the Governor of the Bank of England is anywhere near right, of some £3,000 million a year.

Given the free movement of capital in the Common Market countries, and given that on a number of occasions Britain has had a balance of Payments Crisis situation due to the capital account, why is it simply the balance of payments on current account which is mentioned in this context?

The mind boggles at a Cabinet, at a stage where this country is in a balance of Payments Crisis such as we currently have, deliberately bringing in an order to do away with a subsidy of this kind which must be a direct and wilful discouragement to the production of food.

deposit scheme operating in Italy which was got through GATT because of the Italian balance of Payments Crisis.

As we have done so, we have had one balance of Payments Crisis after another.

It is intended to cover general measures to meet a balance of Payments Crisis, and we should need, if we adopted action under this article, to impose a general pattern of import controls, not merely controls over textile imports.

On both occasions, a consumption-led boom in this country led to a balance of Payments Crisis and to a further weakening of the British economy.

If it could go flat out without the fear of balance of Payments Crisis, then employment, investment and production would rapidly grow.

We know that the country has been persistently troubled by a balance of Payments Crisis.

As he ponders in his room now, he is asking himself "How much can I do without risking a major balance of Payments Crisis and a collapse of the pound"?

It created the demand which led to the balance of Payments Crisis.

In the end it is said that our goods become uncompetitive, we cannot sell them and we run into a balance of Payments Crisis.

On past form of the Conservative Party, and we know that the only certain think will be an upsurge of imports and a return to balance of Payments Crisis, and, in the main, the extra employment generated will be generated not in the United Kingdom but in Japan, Taiwan or Korea.

We had a balance of Payments Crisis in 1976.

Members, especially those representing development areas, are bound to be concerned because if there is a world recovery so much damage will have been done to our manufacturing industry that when British industry tries to re-equip there will be a flood of imports and a short feveredboom followed by a balance of Payments Crisis that will blank off British recovery at the moment when the recovery of some of our major competitors can go ahead.

Imports are rising so quickly that the revenues from North Sea oil cannot prevent a serious balance of Payments Crisis in the near future.

By 1982–83 we could be in the middle of a balance of Payments Crisis, despite having the help of North Sea oil at its most full.

Obviously, I am describing a straightforward, old-fashioned balance of Payments Crisis resulting from an uncompetitive economy and leading to devaluation.

Any expansion of the economy without controls would bring such a flood of imports that it would offset the benefits of North Sea oil and cause a balance of Payments Crisis.

It is that on the precedents sustained expansion may well generate an ever-increaing trade gap and an unsupportable balance of Payments Crisis.

and the most formidable balance of Payments Crisis in our history.

Since the war, whenever this country has begun to get growth, we have had a balance of Payments Crisis and, therefore, we have had a stop-go policy.

There is no balance of Payments Crisis.

Any realistic alternative must meet—as those solutions do not—the two barriers to sustainable expansion, which are preventing a balance of Payments Crisis as well as unsupportable inflation.

Is the Minister aware that Costa Rica's economy has been savagely hit by the fall in coffee prices and the rise in world oil prices and that it now has a balance of Payments Crisis on its hands?

We understand from the autumn forecast that we shall have a balance of Payments Crisis next year.

The reason why this has not yet turned into an unmanageable balance of Payments Crisis is that in 1972 we had a virtually nil balance of trade in oil products with the members of the EC, but in the first half of 1982 we were exporting an annual £4,000 million of North sea oil which helped, but did not overcome, the defict that had accumulated in our manufacturing trade.

The consequences we face include a balance of Payments Crisis.

The prospect is of any recovery-as the Prime Minister has admitted with her new-found post-election candour-being only patchy, and of being wrecked altogether by the looming balance of Payments Crisis, with a major fall in sterling, a rise in interest rates and a tight consumer squeeze.

It was wholly extraordinary that, in what the Chancellor no doubt believed to be a tour d'horizon of the entire economic prospect, he could not bring himself to give us a word on the looming balance of Payments Crisis.

Recently, the Chief Secretary admitted on television that he was worried about a balance of Payments Crisis.

109 —amendment of a member state's protective measures to meet a sudden balance of Payments Crisis.

Perhaps most important of all, for the City to say that its investment programmes, investment potential and the investment it makes available to manufacturing industry are meeting the economy's needs is for the City complacently to accept an economy in which manufacture collapses, in which there is an incipient balance of Payments Crisis which will break over us when the oil runs out and in which there are permanently 3 million or 4 million men and women unemployed.

They threatened the economy, which they were themselves inflating, chat if it did not behave itself, there would be a balance of Payments Crisis; but still inflation continued and still the balance of payments crisis had to be met by sudden and sharp adjustments of the rate of exchange.

We are facing a consumer-led balance of Payments Crisis.

At the moment we are faced with the prospect of a massive balance of Payments Crisis.

I shall turn instead to the real issues of today, the collapse of manufacturing industry and the recurring balance of Payments Crisis - which, like the huge growth in unemployment and the massive increase in poverty, are the direct responsibility of the Government.

We still have a balance of Payments Crisis looming, record borrowings and spendings from reserves, real interest rates at record levels and 4 million unemployed.

I beg to move,That this House condemns Government economic policies, which have divided the nation, induced a collapse in the manufacturing base, created mass unemployment, led to a serious loss in world trade and an impending balance of Payments Crisis, and permitted a destructive merger mania to imperil British manufacturing industry, as typified by the lamentable decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry not to refer the BTR bid for Pilkingtons to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; and demands that the Government now use all available resources on investment in the people of the United Kingdom, in jobs, in public services, in manufacturing and in training, so that the nation can once more compete effectively and pay its way in the world.

That will simply make worse the looming balance of Payments Crisis due to what has happened to the price of oil.

I shall return to the gloom and doom of a balance of Payments Crisis around the corner, of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke.

It is the theory of the impending balance of Payments Crisis.

It is possible to argue that the economy is riding the J-curve rather than heading for a remorseless balance of Payments Crisis.

They say - this theme has come through in a number of speeches, both inside and outside the House, from the Government's critics - that the present phase of expansion will be short-lived, is artificial, is concerned with vote winning, is unsustainable and will end in a major balance of Payments Crisis, and, indeed, that any tax cuts in the Budget will make matters worse.

Again, therefore, the trite prediction that this is an artificial boom that will end in a balance of Payments Crisis is unfounded.

When he says that exports are improving, he is the March Hare who is telling us that there has been an import surge and that the impending balance of Payments Crisis is likely to be so disastrous that he could not give us the bribes that he had originally promised us.

The sad corollary of that is that by some other strange and, I am sure, utterly non-political coincidence, when the balance of Payments Crisis hit just after the election, six months later in March 1960, Lord Macmillan had to reinstitute all the credit controls.

Instead of advice that we should be reflating we have a warning that we are about to have a balance of Payments Crisis.

In fact, I was addressing very directly the likely consequences of an important provision of the Bill, because it is a crucial element in the strength of the economy and the absence of a balance of Payments Crisis that we now have the supply side improvements that profit-related pay will do everything to encourage.

In the future we will face a massive balance of Payments Crisis in new technologies due to the narrow-minded, mean-spirited attitude that the Government have so clearly displayed.

The Government have been able to obscure the destruction of our manufacturing base by using North sea oil revenues, but those revenues are now in decline and there is the prospect of a balance of Payments Crisis and the deflation that will inevitably follow from that.

It does nothing to encourage investment in manufacturing to offset the balance of Payments Crisis that is coming on our manufactured goods.

If it was not for oil this country would face a major balance of Payments Crisis.

His predecessor as shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), was making exactly the same predictions of a serious balance of Payments Crisis 12 months ago.

All right, there may be a balance of Payments Crisis and the forecast deficit of £4 billion may turn out to be £8 billion, but let us look on the bright side.

We are already in a severe balance of Payments Crisis.

What will he do about Britain's balance of Payments Crisis?

There will be a balance of Payments Crisis, but we have a Government whose supporters promote Bills such as this with a view to importing South African coal from Rotterdam which will have Dutch labels stuck on it.

20 for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,The worst ever balance of Payment Crisis, which has just been announced for the month of May.

Since the high value of the pound, aided by runaway easy credit, sucks in imports and worsens our balance of Payments Crisis, why, even today, does the Prime Minister continue to resist seeking exchange rate stability through joining the European monetary system?

While welcoming the improvement in the figures in industrial borrowing, it describes the present state of affairs graphically asa candy floss society busy spending its way towards the next balance of Payments Crisis.

Under Labour, a balance of payments deficit meant a balance of Payments Crisis.

I for one believe that, in the problem that the Chancellor faces, which is what weight to give to inflation and what weight to give to the balance of Payments Crisis, he is right to give the maximum weight to inflation.

The Chancellor has berated those who have said that Britain is in a balance of Payments Crisis, describing them as prisoners of the past.

Does the Chancellor accept that his policy of high interest rates will make it more difficult for businesses to borrow money to start investing and producing goods in this country and, therefore, make the balance of Payments Crisis even worse?

Then the result was another balance of Payments Crisis.

That has led to a horrendous trade deficit and to a balance of Payments Crisis.

Those with long memories will know that there is no such thing as a balance of Payments Crisis; there is only a sterling crisis.

I am sure that the textbooks did not say that the only way to deal with a balance of Payments Crisis was to raise interest rates.

I do not believe that manipulating interest rates is the way out of what we perceive to be a dilemma, although I do not think that there is a balance of Payments Crisis.

will the Minister speculate whether the failure of manufacturing industry to invest in its and our future has any relationship with the massive and growing balance of Payments Crisis facing this country?

With a balance of Payments Crisis, and record - and still rising - interest rates, there has hardly ever been such an unpropitious time to start new enterprise.

The balance of Payments Crisis is a very long-term problem.

He did not address himself to the continuing impact of the balance of Payments Crisis or to the effect on businesses of likely increases in the cost of water, electricity and gas.

As North sea oil and gas revenues and production diminish, and a balance of Payments Crisis of super proportions hits us, the Thatcher revolution will be seen by the public and by history as little more than a chimera.

That is more serious than any previous balance of Payments Crisis.

That price includes listening to the Chancellor's words about lower economic growth, wage restraints, a balance of Payments Crisis, high inflation and more unemployment.

Another hon. Member who is no longer in the Chamber talked about inflation and what he called the balance of Payments Crisis and the iniquitous level of interest rates.

I believe that it is a cynical attempt to divert public opinion from the Government's problems - the National Health Service review, the poll tax, the balance of Payments Crisis, ever-rising interest rates and the complex problems developing in the housing market.

We asked whether Selby's closure would be considered if it did not live up to the gigajoule cost because of the balance of Payments Crisis and interest rates.

That is indeed revolutionary, but it is commonly known as a balance of Payments Crisis.

We are facing a balance of Payments Crisis of unprecedented proportion.

I asked him what would happen to public expenditure if we had a disastrous balance of Payments Crisis.

He said:I also know that there is no imminent balance of Payments Crisis".

As United Kingdom production has not kept pace, we have a £20 billion per annum balance-of-Payments Crisis.

By 1964, we again faced an acute balance of Payments Crisis.

We have rising unemployment again, inflation is higher than when they came to office and we have a balance of Payments Crisis.

After the boom years, we were once more in a balance of Payments Crisis and once again, the decision was deferred.

Given that since the Prime Minister took office we have lost 250,000 manufacturing jobs out of a total of 750,000 jobs that have been lost and that 30,000 firms have gone bankrupt, can the Minister say upon what basis British industry can expand and tackle the balance of Payments Crisis?

growth for the years 1993–94 and onwards can be achieved without an early balance of Payments Crisis.

It has led us into a situation in which we have a chronic balance of Payments Crisis throughout the United Kingdom economy and a chronic balance of trade crisis in the Welsh economy.

We have the worst balance of Payments Crisis that I can remember, and the worst public sector borrowing requirement.

It is disastrous also because it leads to massive Government borrowing and it partly explains our balance of Payments Crisis.

The same fundamental problems have brought about our balance of Payments Crisis at the depth of the longest recession that the country has experienced since the war.

38 and 381 deal with the balance of Payments Crisis and the power given to the Commission, within those stages, to control and supervise any action taken by a nation state in respect of that balance of payments crisis.

How will that balance of Payments Crisis help the country?

If we are to avoid a balance of Payments Crisis and a collapse of the pound, we must begin to act.

It shows that any recovery is likely to be short lived, since a balance of Payments Crisis will stop the recovery because of that low level of investment.

Whole sectors have simply been wiped out, so that even a modest recovery will precipitate a balance of Payments Crisis far worse than that envisaged by the former Chancellor when he delivered the Budget.

If I were a member of the Government Front Bench, I would be worried not only about the £1 billion per week deficit in the public sector borrowing requirement but in particular about the £1 billion per week deficit on the balance of payments because, as sure as eggs are eggs, that deficit will ensure that the faltering recovery is aborted in a balance of Payments Crisis sooner rather than later.

A critical issue is the ability to pay, and donors have been careful to ensure that Uganda has no balance of Payments Crisis.

He spoke ofbig concerns about how long the recovery could be sustained before it led to a balance of Payments Crisis.

Every time since the war that Britain has had an economic recovery as powerful as the current one, there has been a balance of Payments Crisis, but this time precisely the reverse is the case.

Does he agree that while past economic recoveries have been based on increased consumption leading to a balance of Payments Crisis, the present recovery is based on increased exports, which means that we can look forward to several years of sustained economic growth?

Since the end of the second world war, every time there has been economic recovery, we have had a sterling or balance of Payments Crisis.

We had Maudling's dash for growth in 1963–64, which was brought to an end by a balance of Payments Crisis.

We are generating growth without a balance of Payments Crisis - something which damaged this country so much in the past.

On trade, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East knows that, as a result of British industry's hugely improved performance in the 1980s and 1990s, the sustained growth that we are getting is not running us into a balance of Payments Crisis, as so often before.

At the same time, we have falling inflation and no balance of Payments Crisis.

per year, there was a balance of Payments Crisis, and economic growth of 4 per cent.

, will we not face a major balance of Payments Crisis unless we do something to bring down the value of the pound, which means tackling interest rates?

How have they managed that with the balance of payments figures heading sharply into the red - just the faintest whiff of a balance of Payments Crisis?

There is to be a balance of Payments Crisis and a collapse of manufacturing exports; the Chancellor foresees a country awash with imports as workers are thrown on to the dole and people buy goods from abroad - exactly what the hon. Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) tells us is happening in his constituency thanks to the purchasing decisions of Marks and Spencer.

They have made it too dear to make things in Britain, and as a result we have a balance of Payments Crisis and an industrial meltdown.

All foreign coal is bought in American dollars, and that causes a balance of Payments Crisis.

Prices would go roaring up and, apart from a balance of Payments Crisis, consumers would be no better off.

To my mind, Anatole Kaletsky summarised the position well by saying that, "in the absence of further remarkable productivity improvements, the strengthening of the pound may now be reaching the point at which it could do the British economy serious--and lasting--economic damage and trigger a balance of Payments Crisis".

In Wales, we had a Payments Crisis of much smaller proportions about five years ago.

The noble Lord, Lord Moser, will remember how in April 1970, when the balance of trade statistics were released and there was one large payment towards buying some aircraft, the poor Labour Government were found to have mismanaged the economy and caused a balance of Payments Crisis.

The worry is that we now have a balance of Payments Crisis.

It would lead immediately to a balance of Payments Crisis in many European countries.

If Greece were to leave the euro, there would be a balance of Payments Crisis.

To finance such projects, which are the only sure way of stimulating the economy and of overcoming the recession, without causing a balance of Payments Crisis, the Government must borrow from the banks and on the open market, or they must guarantee the borrowing of public bodies.

Inward financial investment mediated by the City of London has become a vital factor in averting what would otherwise have become a major balance-of-Payments Crisis.

These activities have succeeded in averting a balance of Payments Crisis that would otherwise have overtaken us long ago.

Unless steps can be taken to stimulate the export of manufactured goods from the UK, we will be permanently constrained to maintain the economy in a state of recession, in order to staunch our demand for imports in an attempt to avoid a balance of Payments Crisis.

The Government of Harold Wilson did as much as their predecessor in cancelling the high-tech projects that threatened to make inroads into the Government's budget at a time when they were severely constrained by a balance of Payments Crisis.

An International Monetary Fund programme has helped to stabilise the economy since the fiscal and balance of Payments Crisis two years ago.

Thirdly, we need a plan to address the balance of Payments Crisis, so that we can pay our way in the world once more.

The reason for the present lack of concern over our trade deficit is that we have found the means of temporarily averting a balance of Payments Crisis, but these expedients will be the cause of much economic distress in future.

He said, “What happened to the balance of Payments Crisis?