I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for South Angus (Sir J. Duncan) agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. Thomson) that it is necessary that the Government should not take any decisive step in relation to the future of jute protection until after the next election. I believe that it is absolutely necessary that we have this breathing space to find out just what the public of this area and the country as a whole think in relation to the protection of the jute industry.

If we go back to the Board of Trade's original proposals it gave three reasons why there should be a change. First, any of the substitutes would make it uneconomic for jute to compete evenly on the market. Let us take one or two of the points. We have paper bags, which are the chief contendent against it. The people who use paper bags will continue to do so whether there is protection for the jute industry or not, because they are approximately only half the price of jute bags. Therefore, the protection would have no effect whatever. Those people who were using paper bags now would continue to use them and there would be no incentive for anyone else to change whether there was jute protection or not.

We come to the argument that there would be another drop in the use of jute because of the use of bulk transport vehicles. Again, this would have no effect whatever, because this method is much cheaper than any other form of container for firms which can use it on a large scale. So there can be no question of substitutes having any effect on the need for protection of jute.

The second point made was pressure from India. India's total exports to Britain amount to only 5 per cent. of India's total exports, which is a negligible amount and would not influence the situation in any way. We have been told in the past by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East that it would adversely affect Pakistan if we took this step, so by placating one member of the Commonwealth we would be antagonising another.

The third reason which it gave was the decision of the Restrictive Practices Court. The jute industry case at the Court was, first, that serious and persistent unemployment would result if effective protection was not continued, and, secondly, that internal price agreements were necessary for this industry. The Court agreed with the first of these submissions and disagreed with the second. Therefore, there is absolutely no need for the Government to scrap the existing protection to the jute industry under any of these three heads.