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Mr. Steen : That is a good question.

Mr. Needham : It is indeed, but as this is the first time that the matter has been raised before us, or before you, Madam Speaker, I am not in a position to answer it tonight--except to say that I shall raise the matter with the Department of Transport and the environmental health officers to find out what they are doing. If the bikes are dangerous, I need my hon. Friend to give me the details.

Mr. Steen : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said so far, but two points arise. The first matter that troubles me is that there is a world of difference between trade between Britain and Germany, which are parts of the same European Community, and trade between China and Britain, in which China is using its cheap labour to bring in bikes that are undermining our industry--we have precious little manufacturing industry left in this country--and causing gross unemployment. Secondly, there is now overwhelming evidence that many of the Chinese bikes are unsafe in wet weather.

Mr. Needham : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those allegations, but they must be proven. If they can be proven, action will be taken.

My hon. Friend said that partly assembled bikes were flooding into the country to be made up here. Customs and Excise tell me that they have a monitoring system and have checked a number of consignments of bicycle parts from China, and that they have found no evidence of the practice. As a member of the party in government, my hon. Friend knows perfectly well that the Government cannot

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act on such matters unless there is proof of the malpractice. I give him a categorical guarantee that, if we have such evidence, we shall act upon it.

The fact that some countries have cheaper labour than others--whether we are talking about us against Germany or China against us--is not a reason for excluding goods from third-world markets. This country has always stood for free trade. As my hon. Friend said, the reasons for the demise of the British motor cycle industry were significantly different from those that we now face. We shall do everything that we can to assist our bicycle industry and protect it against dumping and any unnecessary abuse of the world's trading system, but my hon. Friends will have to accept that we must work within the rules laid down both in the Community and by the GATT. I hope that my hon. Friend will not take this amiss, but his speech is not so different from the speech that President Clinton made recently about airbus subsidies, steel dumping in the United States, and so on. Those things, too, affect British jobs. I accept what my hon. Friend says about dumping and the misuse of existing regulations--we all agree on that

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--but we must be careful not to wind up the people of this country into believing that a way to solve the problem is to introduce protectionism by the back door. That would not benefit us as a nation.

I agree that our manufacturing base is narrower than it should be, and that we have to build it up ; but we can do that not least in a market such as China. In China there are enormous opportunities for us to build power stations, transport networks and metro underground systems, and to set up factories ourselves. We can do enormous business there, in the fastest growing economy on earth, which will create many British jobs in future.

It is all a matter of balance. We shall do whatever we can to stop unfair trading practice, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept that we must maintain the balance and continue to support fair trade--because free trade is the salvation of our manufacturing industry.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.

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