I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to deal with those points, which, I know, are of importance and are causing some concern. On the first point, there is no change of principles either in the Agreement or underlying the Agreement. Secondly, on the point of consultation, I am informed that it has not been the principle either of this Government or of our predecessors to consult whole industries before increasing import quotas—for example, in the case of the liberalisation of European imports, I am sure that consultation did not take place. However, I understand that the President of the Board of Trade, on 21st January, informed the Consultative Committee for Industry, on which both sides are presented, of the probable course of the negotiations.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to pottery. To get this matter into perspective, I should say that the quota for this year for pottery imports represents rather less than one three-hundredth part of the total home sales of pottery.

So far as the Colonies are concerned. I know that there is considerable concern here and that this is a very important matter, but Her Majesty's Government had to face the situation that there are no longer any balance of payments reasons for asking the Colonial Governments to import fewer Japanese goods and more Lancashire goods. We know that the Colonial Governments will understand that it is in their interest to maintain their long-term connection with Lancashire, but we did not feel that in these circumstances—of no balance of payments difficulties remaining—we could ask the Colonies, on those grounds, to restrict their imports of Japanese goods. We have, therefore, felt it right to leave it to them to fix their import quotas.