Everything Costs More
Each new estimate of Government expenditure in 1949-50 adds a few millions more to the sum which will have to be found by the taxpayers. Each new straw arouses fears that it may be the last. Yet there is very little that can be said against the collection of civil estimates presented this week. The increase of £16,596,000 in the cost of education was to be expected and it may justly be regarded as a fruitful investment: The £600,00o required for the Festival of Britain is advertising-expenditure which could result in direct gains from sales of British goods vastly exceeding that amount. As to the increased cost of the law, police, and prisons, they are regrettable, but the Government certainly cannot be blamed for them. The extra £1,594,000 needed for child care represents the belated recog- nition of a public obligation which was always present. And so the story goes -on. But the fact remains that it is not the last straw which breaks the -camel's back. It is the accumulated load: It is not the odd million for really essential services 'which matters. It is the hundreds of millions for food subsidies and for the Health Service which are making the Chancellor's problem insoluble. It is of no use to argue that those services are really essential too. Large amounts could be lopped off the food subsidies without any hardship being imposed on the majority of the population. It was always true that the every poor could best be helped by direct assist- ance instead of merely being allowed to benefit by a shower of pennies from.heaven which falls on rich and poor alike. Nor should the Government encourage the view that any and every new health service rims t be afforded. If that were true, even the present vast expenditure would not be enough. •The conception of a free health service springs from the old Fabian idea of a national minimum. There is no national maximum. The demand for health services is infinite. But the limit at any given moment is what the nation can afford out of the-goods and services it produces. The growing pile of estimates constitute the plain evidence. that that limit has long been passed.
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