WOOL FELT HOODS. (Hansard, 8 November 1937)

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Captain Euan Wallace)
I beg to move, That the Additional Import Duties (No. 8) Order, 1937, dated the eighteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, made by the Treasury under the Import Duties Act, 1932, a copy of which was presented to this House on the twenty-first day of October, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, be approved. I feel that the House will not wish me to occupy very long over this Order and the one which follows. I can assure hon. Members in all parts of the House that nothing is contained in either of them to 1498 which they could object. I shall explain them very briefly indeed, and if hon. Members are not satisfied I can ask leave to speak again. The first Order seeks to do something which has often been done before by this House, that is to impose a specific duty as an alternative to the ad valorem duty. The reason for making the proposal to-day is on account of an influx of Japanese competitive goods at very low prices with which the ad valorem duty does not effectively deal. If we are allowed to have the alternative specific duty of 3s. per dozen we believe it will stabilise the market here, and will bring the price of Japanese imports nearer to that of the imports from Italy which is our largest supplier of these goods.

§ Mr. A. V. Alexander
With the disarming politeness which the right hon. and gallant Member has learned to wield in this House he has asked us not to take too much time on these Orders. On this occasion he may be right, because the House is anxious to debate to-night a wider and more important issue; but on nearly every occasion when these Orders are submitted to vary duties from ad valorem to specific, the change is always in the direction of imposing additional burdens upon the consumer. That aspect did not seem to find prominence in the explanation of the Parliamentary Secretary. The fact is that on a large and important part of the commodities covered in this Order there is already a specific duty of 15s. It does not therefore appear to be a very big or important matter to add a 3s. specific duty upon a different and lower class of goods than 1499 those which are covered by the higher specific duty. I should say that in principle we should object to such a proposal on any occasion, but, having regard to the fact that the House has already by its vote approved of the higher specific duty of 15s., I do not think I should be justified in asking my colleagues to waste further time on it.

§ Sir P. Harris
I agree that this is not a departure from policy or principle, but, in spite of the disarming mariner in which the hon. and gallant Gentleman moved the Order, I think we are entitled to a little more explanation. I think the blame must be more with the Commissioners than with the Minister himself. They seem to get more casual about putting forward arguments for increasing or altering rates of duty as the years go on. I remember the time when, although they were then very busy passing new Orders, they did the House of Commons the courtesy of placing before it some of the evidence which had been put before them, and giving some details and arguments for the new duty. Now they are beginning to treat the House of Commons as a mere register of their decisions. Here we have little more than a page giving the case for the alteration, and I desire to make a protest in regard to this laxity. It cannot be argued that the Commissioners are so busy that they have not time, and I think the House of Commons, having appointed these three Commissioners, should insist that they do the House of Commons the courtesy of giving the reasons, the arguments and some of the evidence enabling them to arrive at their decision.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman did state the country from which these articles come, but the Commissioners have not even taken the trouble to mention it. We are not at the present time very enthussiastic in the House of Commons about encouraging Japan to find markets for her products, because we know that the exchange which comes from them is used largely for the purpose of getting raw materials for munitions; but I think the House of Commons should realise that there is by no means general support for this particular duty. The duty is a protection on the felt body, the wool hood, from which the hat is made. While there are some dozens of hood manufacturers, there are hundreds of manufacturers of 1500 hats from these hoods. I am assured that in Luton alone there are 400 hat manufacturers, but, unfortunately, they are not well organised. I understand that there was a meeting of the Luton Chamber of Commerce, where it was at first agreed to oppose the application, but only a small percentage of manufacturers were present, and finally it was decided that no action should be taken. But over 100 manufacturers signed a petition against this new tax, which they considered to be a duty on their raw material.
It has been pointed out to me that in practice it will injure the actual manufacturer of hats very seriously, since it will increase the cost of his raw material, namely, the hood, and it will encourage exporters to this country to send finished hats instead of, as in the past, the hoods in their unfinished state. Therefore, the majority of hat manufacturers are likely to suffer. It has also been pointed out to me that, as the result of this duty on hoods, that is to say, on the raw material from which the manufacturer makes his hats, they have more or less lost their export trade. Luton has been told to concentrate more on the home trade, and fortunately in the last few years the home trade has been comparatively good, but I am afraid that, when the inevitable depression comes, they will then find that the markets for their hats all over the world have more or less disappeared. However, I do not want to magnify the duty; it is a comparatively little one; but I desire to lodge my protest against the way in which these Import Duties Orders are submitted to the House, and I hope that in future the Commissioners will pay us the compliment of giving us fuller reasons for any alteration of duties that they recommend.