1Machinery and plant.
(1)Subject to the provisions of this section, the Board of Trade (hereafter in this Act referred to as " the Board ") may make to any person carrying on a business in Great Britain a grant towards approved capital expenditure incurred by that person in providing new machinery or plant for use in Great Britain—
(a)for carrying on a qualifying industrial process in the course of that business ; or
(b)for carrying on in the course of that business scientific research relating to a qualifying industrial process whether carried on in the course of that business or not.
(2)For the purposes of this section a qualifying industrial process is a process for or incidental to any of the following purposes, that is to say—
(a)the making of any article ;
(b)the searching for or, without prejudice to the foregoing paragraph, the extracting or getting, or the preparation for sale, of coal, oil or other minerals, brine, peat or natural gas;
(c)the generation of energy ;
(d)the repair, maintenance, conversion or refitting of a ship; or
(e)the construction, alteration or demolition of a building or of any other fixed works of construction or civil engineering, including a road.
(3)For the purposes of this section—
(a)the repair or maintenance in the course of a business of an article which is used in the course of that business for carrying on a process for or incidental to any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (2) of this section ;
(b)the storage in the course of a business of anything which is to be used in the course of that business for carrying on any such process or which is to be or has been subjected to, or has resulted from, any such process carried on in the course of that business ; and
(c)the packing in the course of a business of anything which is to be or has been subjected to, or has resulted from, any such process carried on in the course of that business,
shall each be treated as a process incidental to that purpose, but, save as aforesaid, repair, maintenance, storage or packing shall not be treated as a process incidental to any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (2) of this section.
(4)Machinery or plant provided for use in any area designated under section 1(7) of the [1964 c. 29.] Continental Shelf Act 1964 for carrying on any process for or incidental to the purpose mentioned in subsection (2)(b) of this section shall be treated for the purposes of this section as provided for use in Great Britain.
(5)Machinery or plant provided by a person for protecting against fire or other risks any premises, or property in any premises, used by him for carrying on any process for or incidental to any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (2) of this section, or for carrying on such research as is mentioned in subsection (1)(b) of this section, shall be treated for the purposes of this section as provided by him for use for carrying on a process incidental to that purpose or, as the case may be, for carrying on such research.
(6)Subject to any order under section 7 of this Act, the amount of any grant under this section shall be twenty per cent. of the expenditure in respect of which it is made, except that it shall be forty per cent. of the said expenditure so far as it qualifies as development area expenditure in accordance with Schedule 1 to this Act.
(7)No grant shall be made under this section to any of the bodies mentioned in Schedule 2 to this Act unless the machinery or plant in question is provided for use for carrying on a process for or incidental to the purpose mentioned in subsection (2)(a) or (d) of this section, being a process the carrying on of which does not in the opinion of the Board form part of the principal or main functions of that body.
(8)This section shall apply to the production of a prototype of an article of any description for use in carrying on scientific research relating to any process for or incidental to the making of articles of that description as it applies to the provision of machinery or plant for use in carrying on such research.