The Government and the UK micro industry have joined forces to meet the threat of the Japanese MSX standard.

Under the wing of the National Economic Development Corporation (NEDC) a committee of UK manufacturers has been formed to create a home-grown alternative to MSX.

The committee was formed secretly last September and its meetings have taken place behind hermetically sealed doors. The NEDC's co-ordinator refused to talk about it last week, and members were equally difficult to pin down. Incommunicado, in Cambridge, or inclined to maintain the cloak of secrecy, nobody involved would discuss the committee's work.

MSX at the moment is more of a nuisance than a menace and Government committees are usually a prelude to inaction, but the NEDC is taking MSX very seriously. The section of the NEDC playing host to the committee is the consumer electronics department and it is certain that the committee is looking at MSX in the widest sense, beyond the existing home micro implementation.

MSX is intended eventually to go into domestic appliances of all kinds as a versatile controlling intelligence. It is in this context that it might threaten UK suppliers who, in home computers, show every sign of going on paddling without their canoes. In the best traditions of Cambridge, some of these canoes have already gone into the dolphin effect and others are finding barges littering their paths.

The involvement of Acorn's Chris Curry on the committee is crucial. Acorn is looking forward to a future for home computers in control applications, and Curry has been preaching this gospel for several months.

"Stories about home computers being a passing craze must be proved wrong," he said to PCN in August last year. "It is now time to start showing tasks... they will only become an essential part of the home if they do practical things."

More to the immediate point, he was warning last summer that UK manufacturers had to work together to produce a standard interface for their home machines. "One way to stop the growing interest in MSX is to make sure there is a level of compatibility between products," he said.

Since then, interest in MSX has wavered and UK manufacturers have shown no inclination to work together. A standard interface of the kind produced formerly by ITL Kathmill is still a possibility, but compatibility at the more fundamental level of operating systems is out of the question.

The other option for the committee in theory concerns future systems - but the absence of Amstrad and Enterprise from the committee's ranks suggests strongly that it isn't talking about micros in the usual sense of home entertainment machines. The absence of Amstrad from the committee is odd in itself - Amstrad probably has more experience of consumer electronics than the rest of the UK micro industry put together. Alan Sugar, offered the opportunity to put the boot into the NEDC for this oversight, politely declined.

Another significant omission from the committee's membership roll is Digital Research. DR might be disqualified on the grounds that it is American - but Microsoft's nationality didn't deter the designers of MSX. DR's Gary Killdall is another long-time champion of the "useful home micros" lobby and the company itself is very active in the UK - witness its developing association with ACT. It would form a useful counterbalance to Microsoft.

The committee's cloak-and-dagger approach is in marked contrast to the MSX cadre. The Japanese (and Microsoft) have been completely open about their business, publishing details and papers with the abandon of academics pursuing a professorship.