416 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 
2. Certain shipping concerns have recently been promised a grant of 
£9% million to enable them to engage in a highly speculative undertaking. 
3. The nation spends nationally and locally over £100 million per annum 
on Education. National Parks may well be regarded as a means of education 
in the widest sense of the word, and the suggested grant would be equivalent to 
the addition of less than a penny to every pound already spent on Education. 
4. The proposed grant is the yield of less than half a farthing in the 
standard rate of Income Tax. The recent budget has reduced the standard 
rate by sixpence. 
Moreover there will be considerable returns to set against the expenditure. 
Much of it will be incurred in road-making, in drainage and other improve- 
ments within the selected areas, and will thus, by the provision of new 
useful work, help to save the Unemployment Fund. The rest, used for 
compensation or purchase, will be represented by an increased area of Crown 
Lands. 
Nor must it be forgotten, that, while the chief object of the National 
Parks will be to promote the physical and spiritual well-being of our own 
people, they would also incidentally be a great attraction to tourists. 
According to a recent analysis by Professor Ogilvie, on balancing the 
amount spent by foreign tourists in Britain against the amount spent by 
British tourists abroad, there is a net loss to Britain of £10 million annually. 
It is not reasonably open to doubt that, with a good system of British 
National Parks in actual operation, that loss would be considerably reduced. 
From every point of view therefore the expenditure of £350,000 a year 
is easily justifiable. 
SOURCE OF THE MONEY. 
Economically it matters not at all what is the immediate source of this 
money. But politically it may matter very considerably. I suggest that 
the minimum of political opposition would be encountered if the proposed 
grant for the National Park Service came directly out of the surplus accruing 
annually from existing Crown Lands. For many years this surplus has 
amounted to over £1,000,000; in each of the last two years it was 
£1,250,000 ; hitherto it has simply been paid into the Treasury for general 
purposes. Nothing could be more appropriate than that part of it, at 
least, should be used for extending the area of the Crown Lands. The | 
Act which brings the National Park system into being should therefore 
provide that the Commissioners of Crown Lands shall, out of their annual 
profits, pay an agreed sum (such as £350,000) into a special fund to be 
used by the National Park Commission for the purposes of the Act. 
Unexpended sums to be accumulated in the Fund, and not to be attachable 
by the Treasury for other purposes. 
Lands purchased by the Commission should be vested in the Crown but 
administered by the Commission. 
The Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands should be Chairman of the 
National Parks Commission. 
The Commission should also have borrowing powers on the security 
of their annual grant. 
RESULTS. 
On the assumption that one-third of the proposed annual income of 
the Commission is earmarked for Scotland, and that, on average, one-third 
of this sum is used for administrative expenses and for development, there 
will remain about £80,000 annually for the purpose of land purchase in 
Scotland. Several independent lines of evidence lead to the conclusion 
