§ 9. Mr. Formanasked the Secretary of State for Trade whether he will make a statement on the Government's trade policy.
§ 10. Mr. Tim Rentonasked the Secretary of State for Trade what steps he is taking to increase Great Britain's share of world trade against a background of increasing world protectionism.
§ Mr. MeacherOur policy is to widen trade opportunities while firmly resisting unfair practices of others, and to support the efforts of all our exporters.
§ Mr. FormanDoes the Under-Secretary accept that if and when the present recession passes there will still remain a serious problem for this country posed by the so-caller super-competitive countries? What is his Department prepared to do about this, particularly in relation to pressing our EEC partners to liberalise procurement policies so as to increase the volume of our market and thereby encourage British firms to trade up so that they can move more and more into capital goods and high technology sectors, as the Germans have so successfully done?
§ Mr. MeacherI accept that those are sensible policies. They are certainly policies which, with appropriate aid from the BOTB, we are encouraging our companies to abide by. We are also concerned, with regard to the super-competitive and developing countries, with the prohibitively high tariffs which they still retain, although they are not among the poorest of developing countries. We are using our position within the EEC to press those countries to reduce tariffs and to accept the international rules of GATT a great deal more.
§ Mr. RentonDoes the Minister agree that it is impossible to achieve full employment in a closed economy because of our interdependence upon each other? 13 Why, then, is the Secretary of State for Trade reported as approving selective safeguards for GATT? Is that not a dangerous move towards protectionism, and does it not mean that we now intend to kick hardest against those who offer our consumers the best bargain?
§ Mr. MeacherThe problem with the hon. Gentleman's diagnosis is that he does not seem to have noticed that full employment is not compatible with an open trading system either. Although the Government have made strenuous efforts to maintain the openness of the world trading system, unemployment has continued to rise. The purpose of the selective safeguards is precisely to preserve intact the basic structure while taking action against a few countries, which can be highly disruptive of business opportunities and levels of jobs in many other countries.
§ Mr. John EllisWill my hon. Friend now take the bull by the horns and recommend to his colleagues that we ought to have selective import controls? Is this not yet one more respect in which we cannot look after the interests of our own nation because of our involvement with the Common Market?
§ Mr. MeacherPerhaps my hon. Friend has not noticed that we already have selective import controls in quite a few sectors. These include textiles and footwear, as well as, increasingly, the arrangements being made about world trade in steel, to some extent in shipbuilding and to a degree also in consumer electronics; moreover, one-third of ah1 our imports from Japan are now subject to the voluntary restraint agreement. There has been a substantial increase in selective import controls.
§ Mr. ParkinsonWill the Minister confirm that Britain's exports represent 27 per cent, of gross national product, and that Japan's represent 13 per cent, and America's only 8 per cent., so that we are twice as dependent as the Japanese on exports and three times as dependent as the Americans? Will the hon. Gentleman tell his hon. Friends that we have a great deal to lose if we spark off protectionism?
§ Mr. MeacherI cannot confirm those figures, though they sound about right. But what the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have noticed is that there has 14 also been an extremely sharp increase in the rate of imports, so that the marginal propensity of this country to import manufactures is around 50 per cent., and this constitutes a real problem.