§ 142. Mr. Maudlingasked the Minister of Supply if he will give an estimate of the present machine tool capacity of the country expressed as a percentage of 1945 capacity; and the number of man-hours per tool worked in 1945 and 1950, respectively.
§ Mr. G. R. StraussThe productive capacity of machine tools installed in industry is probably slightly higher in 1950 than in 1945, but I regret that, in the absence of information about the scale on which machine tools have been scrapped, it is not possible to be more precise. Statistics are not available in a form which would enable me to answer the second part of the Question.