World War II again brought incessant pressure for shipbuilding and repair. Naval work in 1943 amounted to 70 per cent of all new construction. The exceptional demands of the times exposed more of the deficiencies of UK yards. Problems were coming to a head in 1942, when they occasioned two assessments of the industry. In July a report, ‘Labour in mercantile and naval shipyards’, was made to government by a committee headed by the chairman of Metal Box, Robert Barlow. It identified a ‘lack of discipline’ at work, and inadequate appreciation of the urgency of the situation on the part of both managements and unions: ‘Overall … a degree of complacency among all concerned permeates the whole field of production’. Another enquiry later that summer identified the problems of the bad layout of yards, a lack of young managers and, from those in charge, insufficient acquaintance with modern methods so that ‘The planning of the work and the operation of the shipyard does not appear to have made much progress in the last 20 years’. Youngson later summed up the situation: ‘Prewar doubts about the shipyards’ efficiency proved as a rule only too well founded. There was a general obsolescence of plant, tools and power supplies, and methods of work were not all that modern either’. Up-to-date welding technology had to be introduced to ‘a backward and distrustful industry’. The government found it necessary to help with reequipment and modernisation. Between 1940 and 1943 the UK imported—for all industries—machine tools amounting to three times the tonnage brought in during the whole of World War I.