§ Mr. Proudfootasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will now make a statement regarding the Report on Decimal Coinage and the Metric System by joint committees of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of British Chambers of Commerce.
Mr. AmoryThe report recently published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of British Chambers of Commerce on the introduction of a decimal coinage and of a metric system of weights and measures is an interesting study which seems amply to justify the initiative taken by the two bodies which sponsored it. While it is not in form a report to Her Majesty's Government, we shall study its findings with care.
There is clearly force in the report's recommendation that an early decision in principle for or against the adoption of a decimal coinage is desirable, if only because delay will add to the expense if a change is finally made. At the same time it is clearly necessary to discover more precisely what the country at large thinks on the question, since the convenience of the community is the main consideration involved. We shall accordingly welcome the widest discussion of this question.
The report is helpful in bringing out clearly the point that a decision to introduce a decimal currency cannot usefully be divorced from a decision on the particular decimal system to be adopted. A comparison of various possible systems suggest that the pound does not lend itself particularly readily to decimalisation, since its hundredth part would be too large to serve conveniently as the smallest unit of currency, while its division into a thousand parts would involve the inconvenience and expense of working to three points of decimals.
On the other hand there are evident objections in which Her Majesty's Government see great force to giving up 120W the pound as the main unit of currency, bearing in mind the role which it has for long played in international trade, and the respect in which it is held throughout the world. If this consideration were thought decisive, the practical choice would then be between the retention of our present currency and the adoption of a decimal currency based on the pound (i.e. the £/mit. system or some variant of it).