§ Mr. Owenasked the Minister of Education, as representing the Minister for Science, if the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research will make an assessment of the progress of automation in British industry as at the end of 1960, and publish the report as a White Paper.
§ Sir D. Eccles:My noble Friend is advised that the detailed assessment of the progress of automation in industry 94W would be most difficult to carry out satisfactorily, because this field is very wide and is not susceptible of precise definition. While such an assessment might not therefore justify the use of the scarce specialists that would be necessary, my noble Friend is considering whether some general review is desirable. He also asks me to say that the views of particular fields of application of automation or of particular processes and techniques are already being made; the British Conference on Automation and Computation provides a forum including all sides of industry for assessing developments.