DECIMAL COINAGE.

COMMISSION’S REPORT. MAJORITY AGAINST CHANGE.

The report of the Royal Commission on Decimal Coinage, presided over by Lord Emmott, was issued last night. The finding of the majority is that it is not advisable to make any change in the denomination of the currency and money of account of the United Kingdom, with a view to placing them on a decimal basis. There are two minority reports. The main conclusions of Lord Emmott and the majority of his colleagues are:

1. In any scheme for reducing the existing system to a decimal basis the pound should be retained.

2. The pound and mil scheme is the only strongly supported scheme which complies with this condition.

3. The advantage to be gained by a change to the pound and mil scheme as regards keeping accounts is in no way commensurate with the loss of the convenience of the existing system for other purposes.

4. Grave difficulties will be created by any alteration of the penny.

5. The scheme cannot be tried as an experiment or on a voluntary basis.

The question to which the Committee had to direct their investigations has been under discussion in this country for more than half a century, and the first part of the report is devoted to a history of the movement, the results of previous inquiries being indicated. The Committee examine in detail points made by witnesses as to the disadvantages of the existing system, these witnesses’ contentions being summarised as under:

(a) From the point of view of domestic interest: in (1) waste of time in education, (2) liability to error in keeping accounts, (3) waste of time to those unfamiliar with the use of decimals in those businesses in which calculations in decimals arc necessary or convenient.

(b) From the point of view of foreign trade in: (4) the necessity for an additional step in the process of arriving at the equivalent of the price in sterling in a foreign or a colonial currency on a decimal basis; and (5) in the handicap to export trade involved in the tendency of a foreign buyer to overlook quotations in a currency which he finds it difficult to convert into his own.