Catalogue description Board of Trade: Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Profession: Papers

The inquiry was announced by the Secretary of State for Industry in 1977, as a result of the economic uncertainties of the mid-1970s, the unsuccessful efforts of the engineering institutions to reform their umbrella organisation, the Council of Engineering Institutions, and widespread misgivings amongst engineers about their status and pay.

The Committee was appointed, and met for the first time, in December 1977. The chairman was Sir Montague Finniston, Chairman of the British Steel Corporation, 1973-1976, and its members were drawn from educationalists, practising engineers, industrial management and the trade unions. The Department of Industry provided funding for the work of the Committee as well as the secretariat, a small research unit and an assessor. The Committee had the following terms of reference:

To review for manufacturing industry and in the light of national economic needs:-

• the requirements of British industry for professional and technician engineers, the extent to which these needs are being met, and the use made of engineers by industry
• the role of the engineering institutions in relation to the education and qualification of engineers at professional and technician level
• the advantages and disadvantages of statutory registration and licensing of engineers in the UK
• the arrangements in other major industrial countries, particularly in the EEC, for handling these problems, having regard to relevant comparative studies; and to make recommendations

Its report Engineering Our Future: Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Profession (Cmnd. 7794) was published in January 1980.