A strategy for the British electronics industry

There is general agreement that the electronics industry of this country has lost the impetus, the inspiration, the initiative which it demonstrated in the decades immediately following the War. It is quite clearly not growing at the rate of its competitors around the world, and its share of the market is notably lagging for those products which are elsewhere demonstrating the fastest opportunities for expansion. To state such facts is easy, what is not easy is to distinguishthe contributory factors and, more important, to prescribe corrective measures. An authoritative and thoughtful attempt to do just these things has recently been made by the Economic Development Committee for Electronics (EEDC) which its chairman, Sir Henry Chilver, has set out in a brief report that has been welcomed by the Minister of State for Industry and Information Technology, Mr Kenneth Baker, as the most important NEDO pronouncement of the year. Subsequently, at a meeting of the National Economic Development Council on February 3rd, a response to the EEDC document by the Minister was received, entitled `A Programme for Action¿. To a certain extent the two documents only reiterate what has been done, or proposed, and not a great deal of `new thinking¿ can be discernedin either. As a survey of industry and government interaction however, they are, together, of interest to electronic and radio engineers.