I congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) on his success in obtaining this Adjournment debate. He, like I, has the honour to represent a constituency in west Yorkshire. I wish to emphasise the importance of the clothing and textile industries to west Yorkshire.

A recent study to investigate the economic prospects of the west Yorkshire region in the 1990s highlighted the importance of the textile and clothing industries to the regional economy. The study was commissioned by west Yorkshire's five district councils and was undertaken by the university of Louvain in Belgium and the United Kingdom's Cambridge Economic Consultants.

The main points highlighted by the study were the increased and national vulnerability of textiles and clothing due to the shift of production towards south and east Europe and south-west Asia; the continuing threats to the industries caused by exchange rate variations and subsidised competitors; the difficulties caused by the false labelling of imported materials and products and the dumping of Turkish acrylic yarn; and the continuing concentration of production to maximise technical economies of scale, with a consequent reduction in jobs.

The consultants also point out that textiles and clothing are more than twice as important, in employment terms, to west Yorkshire than they are to the Community as a whole and more than three times more important than within the other industrial regions examined by the study. The west Yorkshire region was included in the European regional development funds' non-quota textile crisis aid programme, but it is considered that there is increased need for measures which could more directly assist the restructuring of key sectors, if the region is to be able to compete more successfully in the single market.

The hon. Member for Keighley rehearsed arguments that we have advanced in defence of the British textile and clothing industry over many years. He came here in 1979; I had the honour of first coming here in 1974. It was clear then that the industries were in decline. That decline has intensified during the last 10 years. In the city of Bradford, 14,000 people are directly employed in textiles and clothing. The livelihoods of thousands more, and their families, depend upon companies that supply goods and services to the textile and clothing industries.

We are in the depths of a very deep recession. Certainly it looks as bad as anything that we experienced in the early 1980s. Unemployment has risen sharply. The employment figures in the wool textile sector in west Yorkshire show an 18 per cent. fall between 1988 and 1990. Every part of that industry, including combing, woollen spinning and worsted, has had reductions of more than 20 per cent. Production and export are down. The extension of the MFA for at least 17 months, as the hon. Member for Keighley argued, should be only part of an urgent strategy that is vital if the British textile and clothing industries are to survive and if regions such as west Yorkshire which are dependent on those industries are to return to economic prosperity.

I pay tribute to my union, the Transport and General Workers Union, and to its national secretary, Mr. Peter Booth, who has been actively promoting the argument for a strategy for our industries. The cuts in interest rate have been extremely welcome, but we must remember that the average company in west Yorkshire employs 50 people. Such companies are least able to afford to invest in new technology, research and development.

We should also remember that high exchange rates create difficulties for the industries that we represent, particularly as many low-cost producers link their currencies to the dollar, often at artificially low rates. That gives them an extremely competitive edge and often an unfair economic advantage over home producers. We must also consider training. We welcome the initiatives taken by the industry recently, but in Bradford we have the prospect of losing 600 training places in the coming year. That is scandalous, given the difficulties that the United Kingdom will have to face.

I urge the Minister to listen to the points that have been raised in this and many earlier debates. Our constituents who work in textiles and clothing are often mystified about the Government's policy on those vital industries. The Government's view often appears to be grudging. Today, as the hon. Member for Keighley has said, they are completely isolated. I urge them at least to accept publicly and quickly in the talks immediately after Easter that 17 months must be the minimum. We want the MFA to continue for at least 10 years. We want the rest of the strategy to which I have referred today to be put in place as soon as possible to assist the industry nationally and regionally.

The Government keep saying that their aim is the liberalisation of trade for the benefit of consumers. I remind the Minister that textile workers are also consumers. If one follows the Government's policy to its logical conclusion, the prospect is that the British textile and clothing industry will be wiped out. British consumers will then depend totally on imported textiles and clothing and will become the victims of whatever prices overseas exporters wish to charge. None of us wants that to happen. Our constituents who work in these important industries deserve better.