In supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) and the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), I wish to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to two specific points. The first relates to the education of people going into the knitting industry, which has been seriously affected. The second relates to Chinese imports.

Hinckley college, with its internationally renowned textiles department, is in my constituency. Sadly, there have recently been seven redundancies at that college. That clearly demonstrates the difficulties that local businesses in the area are facing and the specific impact of the high number of imports causing serious problems to which other hon. Members have referred. In the past two years, imports have increased to represent 50 per cent. of the goods available on the market. That increase has brought about the need to reduce staff in one of the key teaching establishments in the industry in the country. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to bear that in mind.

My second point concerns imports from China, which were mentioned briefly by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley. When I first had the honour of coming to the House to serve my constituents, in 1987, I chose as the subject of my maiden speech Chinese imports, particularly the importation of cheap Chinese underwear. I told the Minister at the time that it was a critical matter. Yet today we are still facing that problem; if anything, it has got worse. The Chinese knicker market is seriously undermining our industry. In 1990 imports of Chinese knickers surged to 88 million pairs at an average price of only 19p a pair, while United Kingdom production in knitting establishments fell by a forecast 8·7 per cent. to 59 million pairs at an average price of £1·25 a pair. How on earth can we compete?

I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that we need the MFA to be extended for 10 years or a replacement agreement which will guarantee a level playing field, as I believe that to be essential.