§ DR. COOPERI beg to ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether he is aware that, owing to the closing of the Deptford Foreign Cattle Market to the cattle and sheep of all countries, except these from the United States and Canada, a large number of tanners, fellmongers, slaughtermen, drovers, carmen, and clerks, earning wages of upwards of £4,000 per week, have been put out of work; and whether the Board of Agriculture will relax the present prohibitory regulation and allow cattle and sheep to be imported for immediate slaughter from all countries which have been officially declared to be free of foot-and-mouth disease for twelve months.
§ SIR EDWARD STRACHEYI have no means of saying whether or not the estimate in the first part of my hon. friend's Question is correct, but I may point out that the effect of the prohibition of the landing at Deptford of animals brought from the Continent has been more than counterbalanced by the increase which has taken place in the North American trade since the year 1892, when the prohibition came into force. For the reasons indicated in the reply which I gave to my hon. friend on the 2nd instant, † it is not possible for the Board, consistently with their statutory obligations, to adopt the course he suggests.