MR. GIBSON BOWLESI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has the Permanent Sugar Commission at Brussels pronounced that the Austro-Hungarian contingent system, whereby a certain quantity of sugar manufacture for the home market of those countries is fixed and a fixed proportion thereof allotted to each manufacturer therein, 67 constitutes an indirect bounty on the production or export of sugar; if so, is this pronouncement final and binding on the signatory States, or will it, since Austria and Hungary are separate contracting parties to the Brussels Sugar Convention, require to be submitted to a conference of the signatory Powers for the decision of that conference under Article VII. of that Convention; and have His Majesty's Government any information that Hungary contemplates seceding from the Convention in order to retain her contingent system, or that Austria contemplates similar or other action in this respect.
§ LORD CRANBORNEI am unable to give my hon. friend any information in reply to his first Question. The second Question, therefore, must be treated as hypothetical and cannot be answered. The answer to the last Question is in the negative.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESIs the noble Lord aware that the answer to the first part of my Question appears in all the journals here based on information derived from the Permanent Commission?
§ LORD CRANBORNEIt is no part of my official duty to inquire as to that.