HC Deb 10 April 1922 vol 153 cc60-1W
Mr. MACQUISTEN

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that during the War the United States of America built a great number of sugar factories in Cuba, where there is now over-production, resulting in these factories falling into the hands of creditors for machinery, and thence into the American sugar refiners' combine, who have diverted the whole of the making of machinery for Cuba away from Britain, resulting in great unemployment of British machinery makers in Glasgow and elsewhere in Britain, who are now also threatened with the loss of the making of machinery for the West Indies owing to the dumping of the Cuban surplus destroying the growing of sugar in the West Indies; and what steps does he propose to remedy this matter?

Mr. CHURCHILL

The effects of the circumstances to which my hon. Friend refers upon the West Indies have been engaging the attention of His Majesty's Government, but I am not in a position to make any statement on the subject at present.