§ Sir David Priceasked the Secretary of State for Industry what steps he has taken to assist industry to discard technologically out-of-date plant and equipment and to introduce new.
§ Mr. ButcherUnder the Industrial Development Act 1982 and the Science and Technology Act 1965 my Department has several schemes to provide assistance of up to one third of the capital cost of new equipment for computer aided design manufacture and testing; flexible manufacturing systems; industrial robots; telecommunictions products and for the microelectronics industry. In addition, individually negotiated grants may also be paid under section 8 of that Act for the introduction of new plant and equipment. Equipment can also be provided under the pre-production order scheme. In the recent Budget a further £100 million was made available for a new small engineering firms investment scheme. This scheme was launched on 28 March and provides grants of up to one third of the cost of investment in machine tools operating under numerical control, or under computer or microprocessor control; in non-robtic welding equipment; in metrology equipment; in equipment incorporating laser or plasma technology or in physico-chemical machine tools incorporating advanced equipment. Later in the year the Government will be announcing details of an innovation-linked investment scheme to which £40 million will be allocated. This will help to "pull through" new products and processes in the market when development work has already been supported by my Department, or where such work would have been eligible for support.