The few hon. Members present tonight will be obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Rhodes) for making some choice comments on this Order. At this hour subjects like this are apt to go through on the nod, but any hon. Member who represents the industrial North could never see a document referring to the textile industry pass without feeling somewhat emotional about it. I do not intend to delay the House because I understand that the Order is an agreed measure between the various sections of the trade, the manufacturing side, trade unions and other associations.

I recall that some years ago, in, I think, 1959—when the Measure for the reorganisation of the cotton industry was before the House—my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne and I incurred some disfavour by being critical about its provisions. Tonight, I do not wish to repeat that performance, because this is not the occasion to do so, but I think it is an appropriate occasion to say that we welcome the further steps taken to rationalise the sections of the industry which are working in a common endeavour to produce high-grade textile materials.

Whether the name "Cotton Board" is now appropriate to the changed circumstances and to the raw materials now in use is a difficult question to answer. My difficulty is this. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne discusses the question whether "Cotton Board" is the appropriate name, since about one-third of the raw materials in use are now synthetic fibres, one has to accept the difficulty that the use of the term "Textile Board" would cut across wool textiles which are not used in this connection. I will, therefore, leave this matter to the experts.

We understand that this Order, which has been described by the Parliamentary Secretary in such excellent terms, limits the functions of the industry to those historic functions which have formed the basis of the Cotton Board for a long time—weaving, doubling, warping, winding, reeling, spinning, and so on. I am wondering whether this is the right occasion to mention that, as a Lancashire man—and my hon Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne is even better informed than I am on these matters—I know that a great deal of textile material is now being made by knitting processes, by all kinds of ingenious machines which no longer rely on the flying shuttle. I wonder how long it will be before those new processes which are an integral part of the modern textile industry are brought within the functions of the Board.

The textile industry has had to endure many vicissitudes during the last two decades, when 130,000 workers were thrown out of employment by the truncation and closing down of large sections of the industry for causes which I cannot discuss tonight. In this period, when great changes have taken place, people have said that Lancashire is inefficient and does not look after its industry well enough to compete with the rest of the world.

Such an assertion is not true. One only has to look at Schedule 2 in the Order to see the recital of 21 functions of the Cotton Board, which are not equalled or exceeded by any other industry in the country. The Schedule refers to promoting or undertaking research, and here I should like to pay my modest tribute to the splendid work done by the Shirley Institute, in spite of the handicaps from which it has suffered through inadequate income.

The Schedule also refers to Promoting the training of persons engaged or proposing engagements in the industry. Her Majesty's Government have recently promoted the Industrial Training Act, and the cotton industry was excluded from its provisions because it had its own provisions built into the legislation which we are discussing tonight. The Schedule refers to measures for securing safer and better working conditions for those engaged in the industry, and Promoting or undertaking research into the incidence, prevention and cure of industrial diseases…promoting the improvement of accounting and costing practice… The Schedule is a most eloquent recital of the steps that have been taken by our native industry in Lancashire to provide a sensible and progressive groundwork for a progressive industry.

In giving my modest support to this Order, I only hope that this step forward to bring greater cohesion into the organisation of the industry will be matched by greater success and prosperity in the coming years than it has endured under some of the hammer blows which it has suffered in the years during which I have been in the House.