XN000022-1993-05-04 — Page 53

TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1993

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I feel that very strongly in Hong Kong where

textiles are extremely important to us. I feel that very

strongly in Hong Kong where I can speak for one of the very few communities where there aren't any tariffs at

all. So, to borrow a phrase, we, as it were, put our

money where our mouth is.

I worry about the pressures for protectionism

around the world. Pressures in Europe, pressures in the

agricultural sector, the pressures which try to add some

respectability to the argument by pretending that the only

way we can protect our welfare standards, our community

provision, is by shutting out the goods from other

communities where welfare standards may not be so high.

I worry about all those arguments and think that

if we allow ourselves to drift down that road, we'll all

rue the day because it will have calamitous consequences

for our economic development and economic growth, I do

think that free trade is one of those issues where there

are dangers as soon as you move away from an assertion of

principle, and I hope we can avoid such a move.

MR. BERGER: Forty years ago, the Democrats were

labelled with the charge that they had lost China to

communist oppression. Don't your proposals have a British

domestic political purpose? Aren't they really designed

to protect the Conservative Party from the post-1997

charge that they lost Hong Kong to communist oppression?

/GOVERNOR PATTEN: