The Trade Facilities Act, 1921, represents the most important of the constructive proposals which resulted from the conferences held by the Prime Minister at Gairloch in the autumn of 1921. The general opinion of the experts summoned to those conferences was that a large amount of new constructional work (extension and electrification of railways, construction of docks, extension of manufacturing works, etc.), which would normally have taken place during the war, still required to be carried out, but that such work was being held up by the high costs of manufacture and the high rates which had to be paid for money. It was felt that although much of this work was urgently needed for the proper service of the public handling of trade, the placing of orders might be deferred indefinitely in the hope of a fall in prices, and meanwhile the Government would be compelled to go on paying unemployment doles. If, however, cheap money could be provided, one at least of the main obstacles would be overcome, and this might in many cases afford sufficient inducement to commence the works immediately. The Trade Facilities Act, 1921 Under the Trade Facilities Act, the Treasury is empowered to give a guarantee of principal and/or interest on a loan to be raised “by any government, any public authority, or any corporation or other body of persons,” the proceeds of which loan are “applied towards or in connection with the carrying out of any capital undertaking or in, or in connection with, the purchase of articles, other than munitions of war, manufactured or produced in the United Kingdom required for the purposes of any such undertaking, provided that the aggregate capital amount of the loans, the principal or interest of which is guaranteed under this section, shall not exceed the sum of twenty-five million pounds.” An Advisory Committee—Sir Robert Kindersley, G.B.E., Sir William Plender, G.B.E., and Colonel Schuster, M.C.—was appointed to recommend to the Treasury, the cases in which, in its opinion, a guarantee should be given.