unreasonable. Indeed the industry has already moved a very considerable way in asking for such a period in place of the permanent protection which it has been demanding over the last few years.
The industry is in essence asking for time to cope with the effects of liberalisation and teriff reductions in favour of the Mediterranean associates, as well as with other trade harmonisation measures of the Community. Much of the Six's considerable growth in recent years in yern imports as a whole has come from the Mediterranean Associates, who supplied in 1972 over half the Six's 'imports, as against only 6 per cent of UK's imports.
Some of the Mediterranean countries from all of which UK quota restrictions were removed in April 1973-are carrying out major expensions of their spinning industries and can be expected to turn their attention to the UK merket. At the same time, it is unlikely that ourtraditional suppliers (India, Pakistan, Hong Kong) who supplied 44 per cent of our total imports in 1972 (compared with only 7 per cent of the Six's total imports) will relax their attention on the UK market. Moreover, the industry will have to meet the effects of our alignment to the Community's generalised preferences scheme on textiles from 1 January 1974. The industry generally, which already bears a far greater burden of low cost import of cotton textiles as a whole than any other country in the Community and must in practical terms expect little change in this disparity for some time to come, will therefore be exposed to a substantially enhanced degree of competition in 1974 and 1975, when we expect anyway that demand will be somewhat lower than it is at present.
Ending the quotas at the end of this year could be expected to have a significant effect on industrial development, particularly in the North West and in Northern Ireland. Industrial confidence in textiles would suffer and this would be likely to have consequences for the "Lancashire" industry as a whole rather than just the spinning sector. Only one entirely new spinning mill project has been completed during the last decade but we now, know of plans for three more such projects including the spinning element in Courtaulds new 44m integrated textile plant in N Ireland.
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