A NORTHERN Ireland clothing manufacturer has admitted that it supplied Marks & Spencer with pyjamas labelled "Made in the UK" even though the garments had actually been manufactured in Morocco. The consignment of women's pyjamas had to be withdrawn from Marks & Spencer stores after it was discovered they were wrongly labelled.

The Northern Ireland company which supplied them admitted they had actually been manufactured in Morocco, but insisted it was a "genuine mistake", and said procedures had been reviewed to make sure it did not happen again.

The total order for 16,800 pairs of pyjamas should have been made at the Desmonds factory at Claudy, near Derry but just under half were produced in Morocco where the firm has a sub contractor. Desmonds insisted that the mislabelling was a "genuine mistake".

Desmonds' chairman and chief executive, Mr Dermot Desmond, admitted the error in Belfast in advance of a Granada TV World In Action programme, due to be screened next week, which follows an investigation into overseas labour practices by clothing firms which supply Marks & Spencer.

Desmonds is Northern Ireland's largest clothing company employing 3,000 people and supplies exclusively to M&S. Of the 11 million garments it produced last year, 83 per cent were manufactured in the North. The rest were sub contracted to the company in Morocco and a second in Sri Lanka.

"Our procedures are very robust but mistakes have been made," said Mr Desmond. "We take full responsibility for what happened and we agreed with Marks and Spencer the best thing to do would be to take the garments off display."

M&S confirmed pyjamas had been withdrawn from most of its 285 British stores but a spokeswoman said it would continue to deal with Desmonds.