TNAG-0521-FCO40-616-Visit-of-Lord-Goronwy-Roberts--Parliamentary-Under-Secretary-1975 — Page 95

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But the rest of the Community is determined to continue with their

existing restraints and want the UK to participate too.

L

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A relevant consideration is the so-called burden-sharing formula

to which the Community agreed last year. We take more textile importe

from low cost sources than the rest of the Community together and the Community agreed that there should be a more equitable distribution.

This will mean that countries like France and Italy would take a greater proportion of growth in Community textile imports than the United

Kingdom. But the formula will only apply if products are subject to

Community-wide restraints. If we opt out on knitwear we shall not be

able to reap the benefits of burden sharing in this important sector.

5.

Whilst the case for restraints on imports on grounds of disruption

to the UK knitwear industry is far from strong the Government are none-

the-less coming under great pressure from the UK industry to apply

restraints. See in particular page 1 of the Annex to Mr Benn's letter

of 13 December which describes the employment situation. The situation

could well deteriorate further in 1975 and, given the general malaice

in the UK textile industry, with short time working and factories closing down, it may not be long before a stronger case for restraints can be

made out on grounds of actual or threatened disruption. penultimate sentence of Mr Benn's letter of 13 December says we would

then have to act on our own and we would have lost the chance of

influencing the rest of the Community to open up their markets and to

take some'share of our burden.

But as the

6. It is also necessary, however, to bear in mind the interests of the

supplying countries concerned. When this matter was the subject of earlier Ministerial papers (Mr Benn's paper EQ(74)46 and Mr Shore's paper EQ(74)48), Mr Shore took the line that since the case for

restraints was weak it would be unfair to those countries to introduce

restraints on thoir knitwoar oxports to the United Kingdom. The 7CO