The Committee on Industry and Trade, also known as the Balfour Report because it was chaired by the industrialist

Arthur Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (, ; 25 July 184819 March 1930), also known as Lord Balfour, was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As foreign secretary in the ...

, was a committee set up to discover the reasons for the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

's economic decline since the

Great War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. It sat from 1924 to 1928. The Committee's Final Report appeared in 1929 and concluded that what was needed was the rationalisation of Britain's staple industries. The losses to employers due to rationalisation would be remedied by the development of newer industries. Also, the Report found that the market had failed to bring about rationalisation due to the rigidities in Britain's economic system. The Report appeared "in six volumes, contained a searching examination of the country's industrial competitiveness and made recommendations concerning the UK's future ability to compete in overseas markets".Mary Walton, �
Balfour, Arthur, first Baron Riverdale (1873–1957)
��, rev. Geoffrey Tweedale, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004 ;online edn, Oct 2006, accessed 3 Dec 2010.

Notes

Economic history of the United Kingdom {{UK-org-stub