§ 70. Mr. Lipsonasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will take steps to increase the supply of children's clothes and industrial overalls; and whether he will arrange for manufacturers to retain a sufficient number of their work-people to enable them to use the material allotted to them?
§ Captain WaterhouseMy right hon. Friend realises the importance of maintaining adequate supplies of children's clothes and industrial overalls, and the necessary steps have been taken to reserve sufficient labour to produce them. As regards the second part of the Question, my right hon. Friends the Minister of Production and the Minister of Labour and National Service have asked for special releases of labour from clothing firms in a few specially important centres of war industry, and the Board of Trade are therefore unable to protect the labour of individual clothing manufacturers in these areas. The Board's officers do their best to help such manufacturers to arrange for their products to be made for them by firms in easier labour areas.
§ Mr. LipsonWill my hon. and gallant Friend give sympathetic consideration to the case I am sending him where a firm of manufacturers is being pressed to have its employees reduced from 500 to 12?
§ Captain WaterhouseI understand that that particular case is now being investigated by officials of the Ministry of Labour, who are seeing the firm in a day or two.