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0.5 million out of total MMF imports of 8.1 million (and imports from Hong Kong of almost 20 million cotton shirts), I should say that any case against Hong Kong on MMP shirts would not be sustainable.
14. Incidentally, when you say that Hong Kong has already conceded restraint on some MMF shirts to Canada and Sweden I should add that the cases for these were made out on the MMP figures alone and that the figures involved were in both cases considerably better than those for the U.K.'s imports of MMP shirts from Hong Kong.
15. To sum up what I am afraid has become an overlong letter I am still not convinced that at present the U.K. would have a sustainable case against Hong Kong on any non-cotton item. The only way you can make the case stand up is by adding cottons and non-cottons together and by forgetting the fact that a restraint agreement on cottons has been in existence between the U.K. and Hong Kong for the past ten years.
I can see that it would probably be very nice from your point of view to adopt a one-market concept, to forget the cotton quotas and to invoke Article XIX import restrictions on selected items of all fibres. But this has not hitherto been HMG's policy and I sincerely hope that it is not the motive which lay behind your successful advocacy to do away with the existing cotton quotas at the beginning of 1972 (and thus to conveniently obliterate the benchmarks established for Hong Kong). I agree that, if restraints on non-cottons were in the future to become more widespread, the situation may change and we may have to look at it again. But this has not happened so far and I can only repeat that, on the basis on which Hong Kong has been operating so far in the non-cotton field, the U.K. would not appear to have a case against her.
16. As regards your last paragraph, I am quite happy to make this correspondence as personal and unofficial as you wish. I agree that it commits no-one, least of all the Hong Kong Government. But as we are batting about some pretty fundamental ideas I think that it can be helpful for our colleagues to see the arguments being used, while taking into account that they are put forward on a personal basis.
I am therefore copying this letter to the recipients of yours, namely, Goldsmith, Carey, Gallagher, Wilford, Sellers and Jordan.
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(D.J.C. Jones)
Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs)
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