SIR SCOTT ROBERTSONI beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, if his attention has been drawn to the exports from this country to South Africa during the last three years, which includes the period of the working of the Chinese Labour Ordinance from the beginning; and whether he has any official information explaining why the value of these exports has fallen from about £25,000,000 in 1903 to about £16,000,000 at the present time.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid the year 1903 being the first complete year after the restoration of peace in South Africa was naturally a year of maximum importation and therefore hardly affords a fair basis of comparison with the year just past.