NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
. Registry
No.
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
DRAFT
SPEAKING NOTES
Type 1 +
From
To:-
Telephone No. & Ext.
Restricted,
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence BRITISH TEXTILE POLICY
DRAFT SPEAKING NOTES FOR EPC
1.
Department
There has been a sharp (but nexpected) rise in
imports this year. The evidence suggests that price
factors, including such features as the cessation of
import deposits, have played the major part in
stimulating imports as opposed to home output.
Overseas competitors appear to have controlled
cost increases where British producers have not. The
imposition of the tariff in January 1972 should confer
a similar advantage to devaluation but unless British
producers can contain costs as successfully as their
overseas competitors the beneficial effects will be
short lived. The relative failure of British industry
to meet the targets in the Textile Council's report
taken with the repeated statements (those made to Hong
Kong are at Annex ; to India at Annex ) by
Government spokesmen (some of these very recently)
that we would abide by the tariff policy, present
considerable difficulties for attempting to argue in the
near future with the very countries who criticise our
change in policy that circumstances on the import front
have already shifted so significantly from the
assessments we had made earlier that we need not the existing quota régime by itself, not the tariff régime to come by itself, but both.
/2.