On Wednesday Mr. W. R. Lawson, a well-known writer on
finance and member of the Stock Exchange, gave evidence before the Marconi Committee. He said that the Government ought to have bought out the Marconi Company at a fair price. The Government had preferred to tie themselves for a long period to a single company, thus driving other com- petitors out of the field. It was, so far as he knew, a new practice for a public Department to pay royalties to patentees, and there was absolutely no precedent for the Government going into partnership with a patent-exploiting company and running up the price of patented apparatus against them- selves. If the Government had investigated the history of the company they would have discovered that the company was not in a position " to hustle or put any undue pressure on the Post Office." To the company the Imperial wireless scheme was "a matter of life and death."
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