§ 27. Mr. Dempseyasked the Minister of Technology what progress is being made in the designing of machines for light engineering; and if he will make a statement.
§ Dr. BrayIt is primarily the responsibility of industry to ensure satisfactory progress in machine design. The Ministry encourages good design practice as one element of sponsorship activities of the engineering industries, and assists the design of new machines both by development and pre-production contracts.
§ Mr. DempseyIs the Minister aware that in my constituency machines are being employed in the printing and knitwear industries which have had to be imported from Germany, not because of any lack of skill or material on our part but because of lack of industrial designers? Will my hon. Friend, therefore, launch some initiative to recruit designers so that we can assemble the machines in Britain, thus saving imports and helping employment?
§ Dr. BrayWhen visiting light engineering firms, I have seen some very interesting developments in both printing and knitting machinery which will substantially help our balance of payments, but I believe that we would be quite wrong to suppose that we can be self-sufficient in all fields of machine design.