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THE DEBT ON THE UNEMPLOY- MENT FUND.
(Previous
Reference: Cabinet 41 (28), Con- clusion 11.)
4. The Cabinet had before them a Memorandum by
the Minister of Labour (Paper 0.P.-275 (28)) on
the subject of a Bill for increasing the borrowing
powers of the Unemployment Fund under the Unemploy-
ment Insurance Acts, the present limit of which is
£30,000,000. In this Memorandum Sir Arthur Steel-
Vaitland stated that revenue does not cover expendi-
ture and that it is certain that before long the
borrowing powers will be exhausted.
asked for authority to prepare a Bill, to be intro-
duced at the beginning of next Session and passed
into law as soon as possible. The Bill would be
quite short and restricted to the necessary
financial provisions, the details of which would
of course to discussed beforehand with the Treasury.
He therefore
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry
of Labour stated that the debt now stood at
£28,000,000 and was increasing at the rate of
£250,000 per week.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer thought it
might be necessary to raise the figure to £35,000,000
but there should be no tampering with the present
scale of benefits or contributions before the
General Election.
The Cabinet agreed
To authorise the Ministry of Labour to prepare a Bill for increasing the borrowing powers of the Unemployment Jund to a limit to be agreed with the Treasury.
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