increased imports from you. This poses a real problem of adjustment
for the British economy. It is of course a problem which must be
kept in perspective. The NICS still account for only 10 per cent
of the United Kingdom's manufactured imports. Our main adjustment
still has to be to competition from other OECD countries, and to
technological change.
10.
I would add that the problem of adjustment to changing patterns of
imports whether from the NICs or elsewhere can be solved only if
we in Britain improve the supply and use of our human skills. We must
increase incentives to acquire skills: this was a primary aim of the
Conservative Government's taxation reforms. We must act on other
matters which are not for Government alone.
For example, we must
make our education and craft training systems more responsive to
industrial needs. We must overcome resistance to flexible uses of
skilled manpower. The case for change in areas of this kind has been
cogently argued in the Finniston Committee's recent report on the
British engineering profession. Above all
Tod
as that Committee pointed
out we must change social attitudes towards industry, competition
and profit if our industrial future is to be secure.
Preferences and Import Restraints
11. All this is action for us in Britain to take, and for us alone.
But there are two important points which we ask the most advanced
developing countries to accept. The first is that trade between them
and the industralised West should be conducted on an increasingly equa
basis. I have already dealt with this as it affects access to the