§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
§ 4.42 p.m.
§ Mr. Pethick-LawrenceThe right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade was good enough to reply to nearly everything that I said on the Second Reading, but there was one small matter on which he did not reply. I asked him whether there was any objection, and if so what it was, to giving under Clause 3 the same information with regard to the countries to which the exports from this country applied as was proposed to be given under Clause 4. There may be some quite good reason why that should not be done, but in default of that explanation I do not see why that same information should not be available under Clause 3 as under Clause 4.
§ 4.43 p.m.
§ Mr. R. S. HudsonI think the answer, briefly, is that we are very anxious indeed to try and preserve as far as possible the commercial character of the transactions that are guaranteed under this Bill, and we are very reluctant to publish any information that would give any lead, however indirect, to tracking down a particular transaction. There are some grave objections from an international, political point of view to our giving a list of countries and the amounts allotted to each, because it would be possible for one of the countries lower down on the list to believe that we had refused a guarantee because we thought it was not a good commercial risk. Where a country definitely comes along and wants a guarantee for a transaction of a much more political nature, those objections would not apply, and it is because we wanted to preserve the anonymity of all the transactions under the purely commercial part of the Bill that I hope the Committee will not insist on too great details being published in our quarterly return.
§ Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.