§ 23. Mr. Jayasked the President of the Board of Trade what has been the percentage increase in United Kingdom imports of food, raw materials, and manufactured goods, respectively, in the past six months, compared with the corresponding months one year earlier.
§ Mr. MaudlingIn respect of the six months ending 31st May, 1960, the increases are nil, 21 per cent. and 47 per cent., respectively. The last figure includes materials for further processing.
§ Mr. JayAre these not rather striking figures which show that the present weakness of our balance of payments is not so much due to increased raw material imports because of industrial expansion as to the relaxations which the right hon. Gentleman has been making in the last eighteen months on imports of manufactured goods?
§ Mr. MaudlingI do not think so at all. I anticipated that supplementary question. As I said before, the category of industrial or manufactured goods includes a great deal of semi-manufactures which are required for our own industry. So far as I can make out from the figures, which I have studied very closely, the increase in the imports of finished manufactures is related to these liberalisation measures only to a very limited extent. On the other side there has been a very big increase in our export of these things. We cannot expect to sell them abroad freely unless we buy freely.
§ Mr. JayWhy is the increase in the whole class of manufactured goods so much greater than that of raw materials?
§ Mr. MaudlingIt is precisely because in that field people want to buy more things. There is a rising demand not, I think, because of liberalisation. Even without liberalisation measures one would have had an increase of very much the same size in this group.