§ Mr. Albuasked the Lord President of the Council whether he will make a statement about the Committee on Industrial Productivity.
§ Mr. H. MorrisonI have recently received from the Committee on Industrial Productivity a Second Report in which, after reviewing their work, the Committee recommend that they should be discharged in view of the satisfactory stage which has now been reached in arranging for more specialised and permanent bodies to deal with most of the important problems relevant to the increase of industrial productivity. The Government do not wish to discourage any committee who feel that they have done their job from recommending their own dissolution and are, therefore, accepting the recommendation.
Appropriate arrangements are being made for the work initiated by the Human Factors Panel to be carried on under the auspices of the Medical Research Council, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the British Institute of Management and other bodies concerned.
24WThe Import Substitution Panel is being reformed to deal with technical aspects of the development of natural resources whether designed to save imports or not. The Advisory Council on Scientific Policy has set up a Standing Scientific Library and Technical Information Committee which will take over in due course the co-ordination functions hitherto carried out by the Panel on Technical Information Services. The second and final Report of the Committee on Industrial Productivity is being issued as a White Paper, and copies will be available in the Vote Office this afternoon.
I should like to take this opportunity of thanking Sir Henry Tizard and the Chairman of Panels—Sir George Schuster, Professor Zuckerman, Dr. Alexander King and Sir William Stanier—and all their colleagues who have been in this work for the very helpful and concrete advice and suggestions they have made. Since the Committee and its panels were set up as a short-term measure to bridge the gap between the winning and application of knowledge in both the natural and the social sciences, the importance of increasing industrial productivity has become generally accepted and productivity is, in fact, increasing at a most encouraging pace. The type of progress which the Government looked for in setting up this Committee is, in fact, being achieved and that is a cause for satisfaction and encouragement.