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preference for the whole of the transitional period, and that if during the transitional period Commonwealth exporters found that the reduction in the margin of preference made it no longor worth their while to comply with the origin rules, they would cease to claim preference. To introduce a quite new set of rules would be a very substantial administrative task, and he doubted whether Britain could contemplate undertaking this for a period of only a few years. Mr. Audland recalled that during the last negotiations it had been tacitly accepted that we should maintain existing Commonwealth origin rules until our imports had ceased to receive any Commonwealth Preference. If we were now to seek to relax these rules during the transitional period, the Six would inevitably be suspicious, and the likely result would be that negotiations would become bogged down over questions of origin and the deflection of trade.
17. Mr. Cowperthwaite recalled that Hong Kong gave to certain imports from the Commonwealth the benefit of differential tax treatment; these wore not, strictly speaking, tariff preferences, though they amounted to much the same thing. Since Britain would be ceasing to give preferences to Hong Kong, it would be logical if Hong Kong were free to retain, or bargain away her 'preferences' as she saw fit. Sir A. Snelling replied that Britain could not reasonably object to this, though the Six might take the line in negotiations that we could not enter the Community until we had made arrangements for the abolition of such preferences we now enjoyed as were not going to be shared with them.
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