Mr. Douglas Jay is not, to put it politely, the
happiest of the Government's platform speakers, and his remarks at the National Savings Assembly at Folkestone last week can hardly be ranked among his happiest efforts. " The Government," he said, " was basing its plans on the assumption that personal savings and undis- tributed company profits would rise from £637 million in 1949 to £805 million in 1950," and he defended the assumption against the charge of undue optimism which he foresaw might be brought against it. Well, the first hard comment consists of figures published three days later, showing that National Savings for the last week in April represented minus 11,850,000—that is to say £1,850,000 more was drawn out than was paid in. That is no isolated failure. The same thing has been happening week after week. Mr. Jay must be expect- ing something very handsome from undistributed company profits if their yield is going to offset the saving trend. Of course, the savings total is increasing nominally, owing to the addition of interest to the existing deposits, week by week, but that comes out of the Government's pocket, not out of savers'.
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