Report Warns About U.K. Aviation Future

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30936, 17 December 1965, Page 18

Report Warns About U.K. Aviation Future

tN.Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, Dec. 16. Britain’s troubled aviation industry must give top priority to closer links with Europe—especially France—if it is to survive, a government report said today. The report bluntly warned that Britain must face up to the fact that in future it will have to buy the largest and most complex weapons systems it needs from the United States.

A committee headed by Lord Plowden, a 58-year-old civil servant and ihdustrialist, which produced the report urged partial State ownership in Britain’s two major firms —the British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddeley Aviation —as part of a sweeping plan to reorganise the industry. It called on the Government to take an early initative in boosting international cooperation by calling a conference of European Aviation Ministers. Such a conference should hammer out an agreed longterm policy for aircraft manufacture and needs in Europe —“leading in time to the creation of a European aircraft industry, with Europe as its basic market.” In future, the British Government should abandon past policies of giving aviation greater support than any

other national industry. The basic problem, the report said, was that the British home market was too small to bear the high initial costs of developing and producing aircraft—and because of high prices the Government had begun to buy cheaper planes from abroad. The committee declared: “We believe that the future of the Industry lies in a recognition of some overwhelming economic realities on the one hand, and imaginative and wholehearted collaboration with Europe on the other.” The report analysed the prospects of world demand in the years ahead, and concluded that there were few prospects of substantially boosted sales for the British industry standing on its own. ‘PROMISING FOUNDATION* Turning to collaboration with Europe, the report said that existing Anglo-French agreements provided “a promising foundation.” The combined resources of the two nations' industries offered possibly the only basis for maintaining a major

aircraft industry inside Europe throught the 19705. But it added: “A serious drawback to an exclusively Anglo-French partnership is that even the combined market which Britain and France command might well be insufficient to make a solely Anglo-French project economic. GERMAN KEY “The prospects for any particular Anglo-French aircraft would clearly be greatly enhanced if it had a reasonable assurance of gaining a wider market within Europe as a whole. This wider market is not likely to be assured unless other European countries take part in the project.” The report pointed to West Germany as holding a key position, because of its current close aviation links with the United States. “The aim should be to promote a European aircraft industry consisting of the British, French, German, Dutch and Italian industries, together with any other European countries who wish and are able to take part.”