I am not sure that it would be in the public interest; but, in any case, I have not got detailed information here at the moment. If it is in the public interest, I shall be glad to give it to the right hon. Gentleman, but I can assure him that the programme was a very real one.

I do not know whether it is being suggested that we ought to have made larger purchases before the spring of 1950 or afterwards. If the contention is that it should have been done afterwards, that is precisely the policy which we have been pursuing. If it is suggested that we should have embarked on a much bigger import programme earlier than the spring of 1950, then I think it has been forgotten that that was at the very time when we were being urged to indulge in greater dollar economy. Indeed, the official Opposition at that time, so far from urging us to spend dollars more freely, were, of course, warning us that another dollar crisis was likely.

I do not blame them for that, because it was quite a general view, but it is not consistent with saying now that we should have been spending dollars much more freely then. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) quoted a statement by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton), at a much later date—November 16th, 1950, four or five months after we had embarked on the policy of easier purchases—in which he said: The purpose of my argument is to try to show that, until we can calculate the effect of a rise in prices of raw materials, we should be slow to rush into very much relaxation of dollar purchases."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th November, 1950; Vol. 480, c. 1925.] That should be borne in mind.

The picture which has been painted of tailing imports of raw materials in 1949 and 1950 is, in fact, false. The actual facts are these. If we take the volume of imports of raw materials into the United Kingdom in 1947 as 100, they rose in 1948 to 104, in 1949 to 117, and, in 1950, still further to 123.