Question: You are the patron of the UK metric association - what exactly does it hope to achieve?

Lord Howe: It hopes to achieve the completion of Britain's conversion to the metric system. We started almost forty years ago. We were the first country in the Commonwealth to start the process of metrication and now we are the only Commonwealth country not to have completed the process. It's high time we sorted ourselves out.

Question: You were the minister responsible for the metrication programme in 1972 and you were Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Government abolished the metrication board. Why didn't you have the conviction to bring about a total conversion to metrication when you were in office?

Lord Howe: The history of the enactment of metrication is a tragedy because it has never been enacted. As long ago as 1862 a House of Commons committee unanimously recommended it should be adopted and in 1904 the House of Lords passed a Bill saying we should do so. Then the metrication process was started by the Wilson government in the 1960s but it was never put into an Act of Parliament. It was accepted and agreed that it should be finished in ten years. The Heath Government, during which time I was (amongst other things) Minister for Metrication, carried on this task.

It seemed to be going very smoothly but I'm afraid that when the Thatcher Government came in 1979, Margaret was never at all keen on it, even though she was the Education Secretary who authorised the schools to switch to metrication in 1973. As a very modest but foolish measure of economy, we allowed the Metrication Board to be abolished. I regret that very much because it was the one body that could and should have sustained the educational campaign, to achieve completion of the process.

Question: What effect has there been to the UK economy of having this dual structure of metric and imperial?

Lord Howe: I think it has been seriously damaging and continues to be seriously damaging. From 1973 our children will have been educated in the metric system and if you talk to younger people now, they think metric. But after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, six years after we joined the European Community, we stepped up the fight to retain the right to have the mile and the pint for a number of years of transition and that has gradually grown into a belief that the mile and the pint are ever-lasting and immortal. So we are stuck in-between.

Take two examples. First, we've been buying petrol by the litre since the early 1970s but we still compare cars' fuel consumption in miles per gallon. Second, the Ordnance Survey have been producing all our maps no longer one inch to the mile but 2 cm to 1 km. on the metric system. Yet road signs are still displaying miles. For shorter distances, some are in metres and some in yards. It is hugely confusing.

On a technical level - architecture, road construction, building design and engineering for example - there is also confusion. So long as these people have to think in two systems simultaneously, there are going to be mistakes. In the United States for instance, at least two space missions have gone wrong because the technical work has been done in the metric system but two components fed into the programmes were on the imperial system, causing problems of immense expense running into hundreds of millions of dollars. The same sort of thing has happened to us continuously in many different ways.

Question: Confusing maybe but not a major identifiable cost to the economy?

Lord Howe: I think there is a major cost. For example, highway signs. It is grotesque that you have to specify the height of bridges first of all in metres then in feet whilst the width is still being specified entirely in feet. Authorities are incurring a lot of expense in having to replace road signs that are vandalised by anti-metric campaigners or removing signs they thought were lawful but later find out they are not lawful. You can't go on living in two worlds - it is an Alice in Wonderland situation.

There was a report to the CBI in 1980 on the cost of the metric muddle. It estimated that continuing to work in dual systems of measurement was increasing UK production costs by £5,000 million every year - then about half the cost of the National Health Service. In the companies on which the survey was based, their increased production costs were equal to 9% of their gross profit and 14% of their net profit. You can't stay prosperous, or even survive, for long when you have to cope with such inefficient working, due to the Government failing to get Britain properly metric.

Every time a supermarket has to dual-label a cabbage or a carrot, that increases the cost of food for British consumers

Question: You would like to see the Government commit itself to a public information campaign for people to have a better understanding of the metric system. What exactly would this entail?

Lord Howe: Much the same as when we decimalised the currency. People thought that when we were going to move away from pounds shillings and pence into pounds and pennies it was going to be awful.

Decimalisation was the subject of a well-orchestrated information campaign. People were well informed as to what was going to happen and the change-over went very quickly. If anyone was now to suggest that we return to pounds, shillings and pence they'd be denounced as barmy.

Question: How much do you think this kind of information campaign would cost?

Lord Howe: I wouldn't like to say what the cost would be but it would be substantial. The way to keep the cost down is to have a well-managed conversion - and to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.

Question: Your final aim is to have this cut off point where we have full metrication but why should this Government have the confidence to achieve this when successive UK governments over many many years have shied away from this because they have seen that it as potentially politically damaging. People are passionate about the inch and the mile.

Lord Howe: I don't think the Government should shy away from metrication. There are few people more passionate than the Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. They all had the same system as we did but they've all been sufficiently sensible to subdue their passions. Now they look back on us as if we are completely stuck in a rut.

The rest of the world, with the exception of the United States, has completed metrication. People say the United States is a metric buttress but even there the United States gallon isn't the same as an imperial gallon. So we haven't got much support there. And about 40 per cent of American companies have switched to metric for practical purposes, so we're living in a self-imposed twilight. It requires political courage and conviction rather than cowardice and inertia.

Question: How would the Government counter a very hostile press who haven't warmed to full metrication and are very quick to defend imperial measurements and hail metric martyrs?

Lord Howe: Our press have a recidivist, archaic, small 'C' conservatism on this issue.They think it is populist. I feel deeply sorry for the metric martyrs because there have been no metric martyrs in the other countries that have had full metrication. There was never a shilling or pence martyr, because that conversion was done properly.

We politicians I'm afraid have let the public down and it's time we summoned up the courage together, from all parties, to say enough is enough. We were invited in the late eighteenth century to join the French in designing the metric system. Everyone else joined in - but we have turned our back on it, to our own great disadvantage.

Metrication can work, when it's done the popular way - as in the Olympics, where 100 metres seems exactly right. A 100 yard race sounds now like something from another age. In Australia, when they made the change, they were wise enough to make the first changes on the racecourse, so that the furlong and the mile disappeared there, and people were popularly informed immediately. We no longer have the 25-yard line in rugby, it's happened. People might cherish the 22-yard cricket pitch but I'm not so sure how important that is.

Question: There's a perception that a movement to full metrication is a diktat from Brussels?

Lord Howe: That's a tragedy and another mistake that has been made. It should have been part of UK legislation. The final decision to go for metric was taken in 1965, years before we joined the European Community. Then we did join the EEC, which was entirely metric. Many of our civil servants felt that their political masters required them to resist - and they fought a desperate rearguard action, moving every change only a millimetre at a time. So the regulations emerged in a hopelessly confused state, where only the minimum is being done.

We've got the worst of both worlds.

No legislation has been put through Parliament, where we say 'Look, we're doing this because we think it is a good thing'. It's been presented as another compliance with an EU obligation. And done in a form that makes it look as if we're fighting heroically for the last vestiges of the imperial system.

Question: So you want to see the Government introduce full metrication as a piece of their own legislation rather than a response to the EU?

Lord Howe: Yes. It should have happened like that and I'm afraid we made a mistake. The Wilson government in the 1960s made the original mistake - it didn't introduce a metrication bill and the Metrication Board was set up without legislative backing and therefore it was abolished just as easily. Had it been done in an open straightforward and courageous parliamentary debate, as we did with decimalisation, then I think it would have been done properly and we should have long since left all this nonsense behind us.

Question: What's at stake if we continue as we are?

Lord Howe: It truly is a national disgrace to live in this twilight world. Educate children in one way but then have different measurements in shops and on signposts. It's an illustration of the way in which our country hasn't really acquired a familiarity with today's real world.

Douglas Hurd used a phrase, in a different context, that 'inertia can develop its own momentum' and our failure to complete this process is a demonstration of how we have got ourselves into a state of self-paralysis and we think 'Gosh, isn't it marvellous we've still got the mile whilst those Irish south of the border have signs up in kilometres - shows how foolish they are.' They are the people who recognise the real world.

Question: So what's your message to the Government?

Lord Howe: To them - and not just to them. Leaders of opinion, in industry, in the academic world, in the scientific world all recognise this is a disgraceful position for Britain to be in. We need to act collectively and courageously and get together a campaign to finish the job. Going properly metric won't bring the roof down on our heads. It will open up a new era of easier counting and measuring for Britons, with many other benefits for us all.