20 JUNE 1931, Page 1

Parliament On Thursday, June 11th, the Minister of Labour made

the expected gloomy announcement that the Treasury advances to the Unemployment Fund would be exhausted early in next month. When the House got to the Finance Bill, the Solicitor-General was in charge and the Opposition found him amenable to some of their. amendments which he accepted or promised to consider on the Report stage. But the shadow of, the guillotine, against which protests Have been continued without avail, deprived the debating of the interest it Ought to 'have hack. On Friday, the 12th, sugar was to the fore. The guarantee of the loan to Mauritius, already passed by the Lords as we recorded last week, was authorized with the criticism that here was • a dole of only temporary value. When the subsidy to British beet sugar came up, the President of the Board of Agriculture announced that in order to help employ- ment the reduction from 13s. a cwt. would be to 7s. 9d. instead of 6s. 6d. as was provided under the diminishing scale. Sir Herbert Samuel by the straitest Free Trade argument condemned the whole subsidy as uneconomic, as of course it is from the theorist's point of view. But Dr. Addison is Protectionist enough to defend it as giving employment on farms and in factories.