§ Mr. Nicholas Wintertonasked the Secretary of State for Trade if he will make a statement on the voluntary restraint agreements recently negotiated with Portugal and other low cost Mediterranean textile suppliers: and whether he had to concede further increases in the import levels in addition to the annual growth factor to obtain these agreements.
§ Mr. MeacherThe EEC Commission has recently negotiated voluntary restraint arrangements on its textile and clothing exports with Portugal (for three years), Spain (two years), Greece (one year, renewable) and Morocco (three years). At our insistence, there are improved procedures for enforcing the agreed limits, including a "warning bell" mechanism to set in hand action when limits are 75 per cent. used. These arrangements, which cover about five-sixths of our imports from low-cost Mediterranean suppliers, involve average increases of less than I per cent. on the overall global ceilings for the eight group I products; in no case is the increase over 2 per cent.