§ Mr. Edelmanasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what consultations he has had with British metal working industries generally with a view to stimulating the machine tool industry; and if he will take steps to encourage 399W liaison between such industries and the machine tool industry.
§ Mr. ChatawaySince 1969 a number of meetings have been sponsored by the Institution of Production Engineers, Machine Tool Economic Development Committee and the Machine Tool Trades Association, all of which have been supported by the Department. The aim has been to stimulate investment in machine tools to improve the industry's marketing ability and to promote better liaison between the industry and its major customers.
I am keeping this matter under active review.
§ Mr. Edelmanasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what is his policy with regard to promoting the development and production of advanced metal working systems and special-purpose machine tools; and what estimate he has made of the future dependence of British manufacturing industries on imported machine tools.
§ Mr. ChatawayMy Department supports R & D contracts at universities, research associations and in industry. The latter also receive support via the National Research Development Corporation.
The preproduction order scheme for machine tools which is administered by the Department is moreover specifically designed to encourage the development of special purpose machine tools, of advanced types. Under this scheme orders have already been placed to a total value of about £5½ million.
The objective in each case is to lessen the dependence of British industry on imports and to improve our export potential. While the user industries have complete freedom to purchase at home or abroad, the machine tool industry has for many years been a substantial and increasing net exporter and the unit value of its exports now considerably exceeds that of our imports of machine tools. I expect these trends to continue.