be restrained, but we would warn suppliers that if imports
seriously threatened to rise, we would introduce quotas at once.
Under this course we would avoid a breach of our international
undertakings because we would not act except where and when the
market showed we had a case for doing so (and we should in the
mean time have warned our trading partners of our intentions
and of the probability that there would be no time to go through
the consultation procedures of the Long Term Agreement).
4.
Import monitoring could be exercised by a system of
consignment licences for cotton textiles from the developing
countries, with a limited period of validity (say, two months)
for each licence. Running tables could be kept of the quantities
licensed of particular categories of cotton textiles and action
taken, if necessary, to restrict types which seemed likely to
rise to disruptive levels. Under Article 3 of the Long Term
Arrangement, it would be necessary to hold consultations with
the countries supplying the goods concerned; but in critical
circumstances it would be permissible to impose import
restrictions while the consultations took place.
5. Import monitoring of this kind could be represented.
(particularly in Parliament) as a development of the disruption
procedure which forms part of the Government's current tariff
policy. The DTI might argue that restrictions on imports could
not be introduced sufficiently quickly in a disruptive situation
to alleviate the situation very significantly; there is, however,
no evidence that they have examined this type of mechanism in
detail with, eg, the Customs, in order to ensure that the
necessary statistics are available quickly.
Commodities Department
29 November 1971
CONFIDENTIAL