8. A faster programme of liberalisation would not be desirable, for the following reasons:
(1).
The UK textile industry has estimated (and the UK Government accepts this estimate as erring, if anything, on the side of optimism) that, if the existing cotton yarn import restrictions were to be removed suddenly, jobs for 2,500 to 2,700 people, or seven per cent of the workforce, would be lost. This is a substantially faster rate of run-down. than has been normal.
(2). Yarn spinning on the cotton system is concentrated in a
relatively small area near Manchester, where it accounts for as much as 50% of total employment in certain towns. The provision of new job opportunities outside the textile industry is aided by Government assistance measures of various kinds, but it is estimated that a sudden decline of 7% in the total numbers employed in spinning would lead to a serious increase in unemployment in the area the extent of this increase dependent of course on the general
economic situation, for which the outlook both in the UK
and in the world has become uncertain.
(3).
(4)
A v
In addition to the damaging social consequences, a small
exclusively number of companies employed/in either spinning or doubling of cotton yarn would be in real danger of closing altogether, thus creating a wastage of economic resources in the form of production capacity, instead of permitting the planned rationalisation of the industry by means of absorption of smaller units into larger groupings - a process which cannot be accelerated beyond certain limits.
The UK cotton and allied textile industry as a whole, following UK accession to the EEC, has become and will continue to be exposed to an even greater degree of compet- ition from low-cost imports than hitherto. Restrictions against the Mediterranean associates of the EEC have been signally relaxed; at the same time there is no evidence that traditional Asian supplies to the UK market will drop. At a time when there are real grounds for fearing a general economic recession, the sudden relaxation of import controls on yarn would have an adverse effect on the UK textile industry as a whole. Moreover, liberalisation in one move
/ would not
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