MR. GIBSON BOWLESI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, in view of the fact that the Permanent Commission at Brussels have fixed specified countervailing duties to be imposed by 1451 each contracting State of the Brussels Sugar Convention on all sugars and sugared products imported from Spain, Denmark, Japan, Roumania, Russia, and the Argentine Republic, and that these duties are different in each case, and vary from 1 fr. 75 to 27 fr. per 100 kilogrammes, do His Majesty's Government intend to treat all the cases in the same way, by absolutely prohibiting from 1st September next the importation of sugar and sugared products from all the countries in question, irrespective of differences in their bounties; what other countries signatories of the Convention intend to depart from the finding of the Commission, that specified differential treatment shall be given to the countries in question, in order to extend to them one common treatment, either by prohibition or otherwise; and will His Majesty's Government consider the propriety of imposing the duties named by the Commission, instead of adopting the more severe method of prohibition.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURIt would be desirable to reserve the Answer to this Question till the debate on the Second Reading of the Bill, when the subject can be dealt with more fully than is possible by Question and Answer across the floor of the House.