§ Mr. Hardyasked the Secretary of State for Trade (1) if he will initiate a review of procedures and classification of the Department's records; and if he will ensure that weasels and related species are not classified as felines;
(2) if he will list the animal names, both scientific and common, together with the quantities of the fur skins imported 410W under tariff headings 4301 5387 (wild felines n.e.s.) and 4301 5022 (animals n.e.s.).
§ Mr. MeacherHer Majesty's Customs and Excise employ considerable resources to check the declarations of importers and their agents, and to correct misclassifications as far as possible. New procedures have recently been announced and are being introduced in stages during the next two years; it is hoped that they will facilitate the detection of any errors in the declarations made to Customs.
As my hon. Friend has been informed in previous answers, Customs are working to produce corrected figures for imports in 1976 and 1977 under tariff heading 4301–3587, where the published figures were inflated by the inclusion of several non-feline species. It would entail undue cost to compile an exhaustive list of the types and quantities of furskins imported under this heading and 4301–5022 in the detail requested.