THE DISSIPATION OF MILLIONS. T HE Treasury has done a most.
useful piece of work in issuing to the public an analysis of the way iu which the money voted in lump sums by the House of Commons for war credits is estimated to be spent in the current year. This information is contained in a Command Paper (9031) published on April 16th, and priced at 3d. Taxpayers who wish to see how their money and the credit of their country are being expended may be strongly advised to buy this paper and study it carefully. That they will not learn the whole of the facts the Treasury draftsmen of the paper are careful to explain, and for many omissions no blame rests upon any one. It is not in the public interest that full details of certain branches of our expenditure should be made known, and as regards many other items estimates must necessarily be of a vague character. When, however, all allowances are made for theie inevitable omissions there remains a volume of most valuable information. The form in which the figures are presented will be found a little confusing by readers who are not familiar with Parliamentary financial methods, and it is to be hoped that later in the year the Treasury will present a revised paper bringing all the figures up to date and grouping together more completely items of the same character. To some extent this latter desideratum has been kept in view in the present statement, partly by devoting a special appendix to the tremendously important problem of war bonuses.
This appendix shows the war bonuses, so far as they can be ascertained, for each separate Department. The total figure here set down as the estimated expenditure for war bonuses in the current year is £.47,046,000. Unfortunately that total does not represent the whole cost.. It includes no allowances for such extra remuneration as increased overtime payments, or allowances for increased responsibilities ; nor does it include permanent increases of pay. Again, it does not include war bonuses earned by persons who are not paid as Government employees, and it includes no allowance for the indirect cost of war bonuses falling upon the public Exchequer owing to increased contract prices for goods purchased. No estimate is even attempted for these further items, yet it is clear that they must immensely increase the figure above quoted. Even that figure as it stands is serious enough, especially when we take into account the fact that many of the persons who are receiving these war bonuses are not underpaid workpeople living on a bare margin of subsist- ence, but are munition workers of one kind or another, many of whom are in receipt of incomes much larger than any pre-war rates of pay. It may safely be said that the larger part of the sum paid by the State in war bonuses is a quite unnecessary increment of wages already amply sufficient to meet the increased cost of living.
In addition to the sum spent in war bonuses, huge sums, as the public vaguely knows, arc being spent in artificially lowering the cost of food. These two elements of expenditure are not entirely on the same plane, but they obviously overlap. There are a few people still left in the country who are not Government employees, either directly or indirectly, and they benefit by the subsidy to food but do not benefit by war bonuses. In the main, however, the people who get an advantage in the artificial reduction in the prices of foodstuffs are also drawing war bonuses out of the Exchequer. It is worth while to set down what is the estimated cost to the Exchequer of these food subsidies. There is first of all the subsidy to the ninepenny loaf, estimated to cost £40,000,000 in the current year. The subsidy to other cereals costs another £6,000.000. These are both administered by the Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies. 'The Ministry of Food sets down another item of 55,000,000 for the loss on potatoes. Sugar is handled by the Treasury itself, and the -estimated difference between the purchases of sugar, and the sales of sugar is £8,500,000. In passing, stress may be laid upon the farce of imposing a tax on sugar on the one hand, while on the other deliberately selling at less than cost-price the sugar that has been purchased by the Treasury. Finally, we have an unexplained item of L18,000,000, administered by the Ministry of Food, representing " Purchase less Sale of Food Supplies." Adding these items together, we get a total -of £77,500,000 as the estimated charge on the public Exchequer for providing the nation with food at less than cost-price in the current year. It is a sufficient comment on this figure to point out that Mr. Bonar Law in his Budget statement esti- mated that the total yield of the new taxes which he is imposing in the present year will be £67,800,000. When this contrast is borne in mind it is clear that a good many of the congratu- lations justly given to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his Budget standing by itself must be qualified in view of the other side of the account. We strongly urge that a Parlia- mentary Committee should at once be set up to inquire how far it is necessary to continue these subsidies. The potato subsidy arose out of an entirely unnecessary conflict between the Food Ministry and the Board of Agriculture ; the wheat subsidy could be met by quite a small addition to the cost of the loaf, or, perhaps better, by allowing the sale of a "luxury loaf " of white flour at a high price.
Among other items worth noting, in view of the present claims of the Irish people to be part of the Empire so far as receiving is concerned and not part of the Empire when it conies to giving, the following may be mentioned. The Irish Department of Agriculture obtains an additional grant of no less than £658,000 out of the Imperial Exchequer ; the Royal Irish Constabulary gets from the Imperial Exchequer a war bonus of 1182,000 ; the Irish Education ,Department obtains a war bonus of £235,000. In addition, there are under the heading of these three Irish Departments items thus described : " Other Votes (chiefly war bonus)," amounting in the aggregate to £628,000. There is also a grant of £151,000 under the heading " Property Losses (Ireland) Compensation," an item which apparently represents part of the cost falling on the British Exchequer for the Irish Rebellion.
Looking through the details of Departmental expenditure, one can only form the general opinion that in almost every Department the members of the staff and the rate of pay of the staff have been allowed to grow without the least regard to financial considerations. There are, however, a few exceptions. In moat Departments some people are giving their time voluntarily, and there are some Departments, as for example the National War Savings Committee, which are carrying on important work at a low cost as the outcome of patriotic effort. It is, however, in many cases difficult to track down the cost of individual spending Departments which are known to be wasting public money. While gratitude is due to the Treasury for the very valuable information contained in this publication, it is to be hoped that the Expenditure Committee of the House of Commons will press without delay for further details.
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