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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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