Lieutenant-Commander Kenworthy, the Member of Parliament for Central Hull raised objections to such a collection, on the basis that there was no option to support one part of the bill but not another. Although his opinion was that this sort of grouping was without precedent, a number of similar collections of disparate legislation were quoted by others. Despite these misgivings, the Act received the Royal Assent on 15 December 1922. Within government, there were two streams of thought as to the role of the colonies. The Colonial Office was convinced that major investment into the colonies would result in them becoming self-sufficient economically, and thus no longer a drain on the British Treasury. Most of their allies saw the colonies as places that could be developed to buy British goods, and thus alleviate domestic unemployment. Philip Lloyd-Graeme, the president of the Board of Trade, stated that the only long-term solution to unemployment was the development of new markets for British exports, and that the British Empire was the most likely source of these new markets. As a result of the large numbers of unemployed workers over the winter of 1922-23, Bonar Law asked the Board of Trade to propose new solutions. Their analysis showed that exports were 31 percent lower than in 1913, when over one third of all exports had been to Europe. They suggested that some £2 million per year should be made available to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, for a period of ten years, to fund development works which would ultimately create the new markets. Amery, the First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed raising this sum to £5 million per year, but the Treasury resisted, on the basis that unemployment was not as bad as it seemed, birth rates were dropping, there was a shortage of domestic servants, and much of the provision of the 1922 Act remained unclaimed. The Conservative government was replaced by the first Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, on 22 January 1924, but a bill for a replacement act had already been drafted, and so little changed on this front. When the Trade Facilities Act 1924 was passed, it included the provision of £1 million to partially fund loan interest for projects in the colonies which would stimulate the demand for British goods and so ease unemployment in Britain. In the three years the scheme operated, only five projects were supported, mainly because the colonies found it too difficult to meet the requirements of the scheme, and total expenditure in Britain amounted to just £500,000. The 1922 Act had expired on 9 November 1923, at which time between £11 million and £12 million of the original £50 million of guarantees had not been used.