CONFIDENTIAL
more staff in Import Licensing Branch. Moreover,
to take back the administration of quotas after
we had asked overseas Governments last December
to go on administering them would mean reversing ourselves yet again.
9 OPTION III would, in varying degrees, run into all the objections to both the other options. The compromise would have to be arbitrary.
CONCLUSION
Unless Ministers are prepared to accept
that the 1971 import levels are significantly
exceeded and to face the row with Lancashire,
it seems inevitable that quotas must be enforced at the cost of strong protests from
UK
overseas Governments and /importers.and users.
(with licensing outside the quotas
only where Lancashire · cannot supply)
11.
IIoLy
If you decide accordingly to follow OPTION II
you are asked further to decide whether to leave
much
the quota administration with those exporting countries willing to do so (administratively easier for
ü S a n d
less provocative to overseas
Governments), or to take back the administration
ourselves (likely to give British importers a
rather better deal).
PWR
CT Division
4 February 1972
MT Rm1107
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