HC Deb 17 February 1959 vol 600 cc178-9
15. Mr. Edelman

asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make arrangements for the earlier publication of the machine tool industry statistics, in view of the importance of this key industry to the national economy and their relevance to the formulation of economic policy.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan

We have been looking at our arrangements for collecting machine tool statistics. I hope that it will be possible for these to be published more quickly in future.

Mr. Edelman

I am obliged to the Minister of State for his reply. Bearing these statistics in mind, do they not show that for three months this country has been lagging behind current events?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan

I was very surprised when I looked into this matter. It is only fair to say that the time of publication depends on the time taken by the firms to complete their returns, but we hope that it will be possible to make an effective improvement.