Mr. H. Wilsonasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the steps which have been taken in the Lancashire cotton industry to encourage the mass production of low-cost standardised clothes for the West African and other colonial markets.
§ Mr. P. ThorneycroftAt my request special consideration has been given by the cotton textile industry to the need for a co-ordinated effort to ensure that adequate and continuing supplies of suitable standard types of United Kingdom woven cloth are available to colonial markets at competitive prices. I am informed that through the cooperation of spinners, manufacturers, and196W merchants, and in the light of recommendations made by the Lancashire textile export team which visited West Africa at the end of last year, satisfactory arrangements, including the reservation of spinning and weaving capacity, were negotiated early this year in respect of supplies for Nigeria, and that the possible extension of these arrangements to other colonial markets is under consideration by the cotton textile trade interests concerned.