§ Lieut.-Colonel Sharpasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the premises of Messrs. Arnold Senior and Company, Limited, Bottoms Mill, Bilkenshaw, near Brad. ford, were requisitioned in 1942 and will be derequisitioned in September, 1946, when the firm proposes putting back into production 54 looms which have been stored; that the Wool Control, Bradford, refuses to make any allocation of wool because the looms were not registered as carrying ration during the period taken as a basis for the allocation of wool supplies; and if he will arrange for the reversal of this decision to enable this old-established firm to resume the production of cloth that is urgently required.
§ Sir S. CrippsYarn is rationed to weavers on the basis of the machinery operated by them immediately prior to the war. I understand that the looms to which my hon. and gallant Friend refers were not operated by Messrs. Senior and Company, Limited, for several years before the war and that the responsibility for the recruitment of labour and for such production as was obtained from the looms during that period was that of another manufacturer to whom they were leased in 1935 and who derives his present yarn allocation partly from that production. Having regard to the continuing shortage of wool yarn, no ground is seen for departing from the ordinary rule which precludes the grant of ration to more than one manufacturer in respect of any particular plant. Any yarn ration granted would have to be at the expense of other firms.