§ Sir W. de FRECEasked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department the percentage of British exports taken by
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Exports of British Produce and Manufactures. Proportion consigned to British Countries. A. B. Years. Exports from Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Exports from British Isles (see above). Per cent. Per cent. 1913 … … … … … (Not recorded, Estimated about 40.) 37.2 1923 … … … … … — 36.3 1924 … … … … … 42.1 37.7 1925 … … … … … 43.3 39.2 1926 … … … … … 48.5 44.7 1927 … … … … … 46.1 42.6 our Overseas Empire in 1913 and each of the last five years?
M. H. WILLIAMSpursuant to his reply [OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th November, 1928; col. 1395, Vol. 222.] supplied the following statement:
The variations in the proportions of the exports of British produce and manufactures shown as consigned to foreign countries and to British countries, respectively, depend in part on the changes in the countries classed as foreign and as British which have occurred since 1913, and also in part on the transfer of Southern Ireland in 1923 from the area which produced the "British exports" to the area which took them. Accordingly, the following table shows, in column A, the proportions of the recorded exports from Great Britain and Northern Ireland which were consigned to British countries in each of the years 1924 to 1927 and, in column B, figures showing the recorded exports from Great Britain and the whole of Ireland to other British countries in 1913 and 1923, and approximately corresponding figures for later years. In column B, the exports from Irish Free State ports direct to British countries overseas, which would affect the percentages only slightly, have not been taken into account; and the exports to Palestine, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Iraq, the South-West Africa Protectorate, Tanganyika, Nauru and Western Samoa have also been left out of account for the post-war years, as these countries formed parts of various foreign countries in 1913, and separate figures of exports to them in that year are not available.