Manpower Services Commission

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The Manpower Services Commission (MSC) was a non-departmental public body of the Department of Employment in the United Kingdom created by Edward Heath's Conservative Government in 1973. The MSC had a remit to co-ordinate employment and training services in the UK through a ten-member commission drawn from industry, trade unions, local authorities and education interests. This was an example of the contemporary corporatist influence on British economic policy.

The MSC was to become closely associated with its management of the Youth Training Scheme and various other training programmes intended to help alleviate the relatively high levels of unemployment in the 1980s. After 1987 the MSC lost functions and was briefly re-branded the Training Agency (TA), before being replaced by a network of 82 Training and Enterprise Councils.^[1]