The Consumers' Council Bill On Monday, the Consumers' Council Bill
received its second reading in the House of Commons. The failure of the Food Council, it is said, has made the Bill necessary. We have always felt that the Food Council could have done very much more if proper publicity had been given to its findings. The public dislike of being cheated could have been mobilized. As it is, there is a case for the Bill and, after all, the main points in it are merely taken from the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Food Prices. It was always understood that compulsion awaited the collapse of the Food Council. The new Council is to have statutory powers to exact information. The authority to fix prices, however, will be limited to articles which are partly if not entirely subject to monopoly. If the Government should try after all to fix prices in general they would have an unpleasant awakening. In the War the rabbit—popular and much sought-after though it was at that time—suddenly disappeared when the price was fixed too low. Never was there a better economic conjuring trick.
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