Reports on Prices
In the White Paper on Personal Incomes, Costs and Prices, the Government assumed the responsibility for keeping these three factors in control. That was such a sweeping decision that it could hardly be expected of the first reports of the trade unions, the industrialists and the distributors that they would produce a detailed plan for implementing it. They certainly have not done so. On the whole the representatives of- industry have been most helpful. They have agreed to stabilise selling prices and distributed profits at their present levels. The policy of keeping the lid on prices by sitting on it is neither satisfactory to business men nor compatible with the known rules of economics but if determina- tion can make it work industry will play its part. It is true that the F.B.I. and its associated bodies can only make recommendations to the 25,000 firms they represent but the Government itself, in the White Paper, said that it could not coerce individuals in this matter, and it would be a very strange world if the F.B.I. were expected to make laws when the Government cannot. There has been some disposition by the bodies representing wholesale and retail distribution to pass the ball back to the Government, which already controls the margins, and to point out that reductions in distributors' profits are difficult to make and in any case must be very small. This of course is true, but it must also be remembered that official margins are sometimes wider than they need be, that all reductions of profits are painful, and that every little helps. The distributors will no doubt remember it and not be found less willing than the manufacturers to play their part. If as much could be said of the wage-earners there might indeed be some hope for the Government's policy of tackling the disease via the symptoms, but so far we have had only the somewhat tricky attempt of the T.U.C. to use the emergency to raise real wages, a lugubrious silence from the constituent unions, and a steady flow of wage claims which show no consciousness whatever of the emergency. The difficulties of working the official policy are becoming plainer, but that is about all that can be said.
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