asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps are being taken to encourage the sales of hand-knitted and hand-woven goods in the dollar markets.

British Handcrafts Export, which is a non-profit making organisation and has received financial assistance from the Government, was set up to promote exports of handcrafts to hard currency markets. All the existing facilities for exporters and would-be exporters to dollar markets are, of course, available for hand-made as for machine-made goods.

Can the Minister tell us, what has actually resulted from those steps that were taken?

The first full year of trade was 1949–50. Their sales for that year amounted to about £2,000. A great amount of that came from the hard currency areas.