HC Deb 28 February 1862 vol 165 cc872-84
LORD ROBERT CECIL

said, he rose to ask the Vice President of the Council a question of which he had given notice, namely, Whether orders were not issued, shortly after the promulgation of the Revised Code, that the portion of it which concerned the conditions under which Pupil Teachers were to be engaged should be acted upon forthwith; and whether forms of examination, giving notice to that effect, were not printed? The Revised Code had two aspects. In one it was a so-called educational reform, and in the other it had an important bearing upon the privileges of the House of Commons. Some time ago, when the subject was first brought before the House by the Vice President of the Council, the right hon. Gentleman was reproached with having issued the Revised Code as a decree of his own when Parliament had ceased for a time to exist; thereby introducing a vast change into the educational legislation of the country without allowing Parliament any opportunity of pronouncing its opinion on the subject. In reply to that charge the right hon. Gentleman said that the Code by its very nature could not come into operation until the financial year had passed away, and that consequently the accusation could not by any possibility be correct. His exact words were—

MR. SPEAKER

said, the noble Lord could not refer to, or quote words used in, a past debate of the present Session.

LORD ROBERT CECIL

said, he would bow to the decision of the right hon. Gentleman; but in doing so he might call attention to the fact that the House was about to go into Committee of Supply, and that he was stating a grievance which demanded redress beforehand. If in stating grievances which demanded redress independent Members were to be forbidden from referring to words which had previously fallen from a Minister of the Crown, it seemed to him that the responsibility of Ministers of the Crown to that House would be quite illusory. The ancient and constitutional practice was, that independent Members when the House was going into Committee of Supply, should have an opportunity of calling Ministers of the Crown to account; but how they were to do so if they were not allowed to quote the words of the Ministers he was unable to conceive. However, in the face of the decision which the right hon. Gentleman had given, he would not quote the words used by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council in the recent debate on education, but would only state that on a certain occasion, which he would not particularize, and in a certain place, which he would not name, the right hon. Gentleman, upon being reproached by a certain right hon. Member, to whom he need not more particularly refer, with having introduced the Revised Code as a decree of his own, without subjecting it to the discussion of Parliament, and with having thereby evaded Parliamentary control replied as follows—

MR. SPEAKER

said, the noble Lord could not do by an evasion of the rules of the House that which he could not do under their provisions.

LORD ROBERT CECIL

said, he would again bow to the decision of the right hon. Gentleman, but in doing so he might remark that reference was frequently made to debates in "another place" without the slightest interference from the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER

said, the rules of that House were very positive upon the point that words used in a former debate could not be quoted or referred to unless the debate was a consecutive one, upon the subject of a Bill or other measure before the House at the time. That was a very distinct rule with respect to past debates in the same Session. Any reference to debates in "another place" was still less permitted in that House.

LORD ROBERT CECIL

said, he had only again to bow to the decision of the right hon. Gentleman, for he had no means of resisting it; but in doing so he might be permitted to say that it was very favourable to Ministers of the Crown. He would not quote any distinct words, but he might be allowed to remark that it was generally supposed that the Vice President of the Council had grounded his defence against the charge to which he had referred upon this consideration—that the nature of the Revised Code was such that it was absolutely impossible the Code could come into effect until Parliament had an opportunity of pronouncing its opinion upon the subject. He wished to test that defence by facts. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Speaker) would allow him to say that he did so last week. Perhaps that was irregular. It might also be irregular to say that it was thought he then introduced a small subject to the House. He ventured to assert that the ground on which he was now about to arraign the Vice President of the Council was not a small, but a large one, involving the most important item in the whole of the educational grant. That ground was, that when the right hon. Gentleman last year promulgated without the sanction of Parliament the Revised Code, his intention at the time was, and he took measures accordingly, to bring it into immediate operation, as far as respected that enormous proportion of the grant which concerned the pupil-teachers. In endeavouring to establish that complaint, he would first point out to the House what were the pledges and statements of the Vice President of the Council. He believed he was in order in referring to debates which took place last year. Last Session the right hon. Gentleman made use of the following words:— I will merely state the outline of the Minute, prefacing it with the assurance that the Committee need not be afraid that we contemplate any coup d'état, because the nature of the grant is such that we cannot make any innovations till the end of the next financial year. That was a deliberate and public statement to Parliament. But the right hon. Gentleman did not confine himself to a general pledge; he referred specially to the pupil-teachers, and his words were these— We intend to preserve the interests of pupil-teachers, and to take care that all future pupil-teachers shall serve, as now, for a period of five years. That was the adumbration of the Revised Code which the Vice President of the Council sketched for the benefit of Parliament in the middle of July. When Parliament was about to separate, and when its control was practically at an end, the Revised Code was issued, and it contained, among other provisions, one to the effect that future pupil-teachers should be apprenticed according to the following conditions:—That they should be liable to dismissal without notice for idleness, disobedience, or immoral conduct, and that their engagements should be terminable on either side by a written notice of six months. It was thus to be in the power of a pupil-teacher to terminate his engagement by giving a written notice of six months, and yet the Vice President of the Council had said only a fortnight before, "We intend to take care that all future pupil-teachers shall serve, as now, for a period of five years." Was that not keeping "the word of promise to the ear"? If the Vice President meant to take care that pupil-teachers should serve for a period of five years, it seemed to him the strangest way of doing it to give them the power of going away at the end of six months. That power did not exist under the old Code. He would not at present discuss the question whether the change was a beneficial one or not. What he wished to point out was, that it was a change which neither the House nor the country could have anticipated from the words used by the right hon. Gentleman last year. But the right hon. Gentleman went further, for he told them in the same speech what he considered to be a pupil-teacher. He said— The main difference between a pupil-teacher and a monitor is, that while the latter is engaged by the job—that is to say, a week, a month, or a year—the pupil-teacher is apprenticed with an engagement for five years. It would be seen, therefore, that when the right hon. Gentleman proposed that future pupil-teachers should practically be engaged for a period of six months only, he made a very serious change in the condition of that class. The change thus introduced by the right hon. Gentleman was a change in the mode of admitting pupil teachers, and in that way, as well as in several others, the Revised Code seriously affected the enormous sum of 16250,000 which was annually given to managers of schools for the support of pupil-teachers. The Vice President had told the House that the Revised Code would not—in fact, could not—come into operation until the financial year had passed away, and yet the very moment the Revised Code was issued the right hon. Gentleman took measures for bringing it into immediate effect as far as the larger portion of the educational grant was concerned. What he understood was that with the ordinary forms which precede the arrival of the inspector there was Bent from the Council Office to all forms a written note to this effect—"Pupil-teachers.—Candidates for pupil-teachers must be subject to the Minute of the 29th of July, 1861, and the provisions of the Revised Code; "thus clearly intimating to managers that, with reference to the admission of pupil-teachers, the Revised Code was to come into effect immediately. It might be said that managers need not, unless they pleased, have offered any pupil-teachers for acceptance; but by one of the Minutes by which that Code was to be brought into operation it was provided that after the next receipt of money, dating from the 29th of July, 1861, no managers should receive any money except in conformity with the Revised Code. A manager whose financial year began in August would in August, 1861, receive his money according to the old Code; but in August, 1862, according to the Revised Code, one of the provisions of which was, that if he had not a sufficient number of pupil-teachers, he should forfeit a portion of his grant. The consequence was that managers were obliged to have pupil-teachers at once, subject to the provisions of the Revised Code, and to acquiesce in the vast change which had been introduced by the simple fiat of the right hon. Gentleman into the mode in which the Parliamentary grant was to be disbursed. Nor was that all. Although, in consequence of the agitation which took place, the Revised Code was suspended, the notification was not cancelled but was sent to many schools, and managers understood that they were still subject to it. In many cases the managers had refused to have any pupil-teachers rather than submit to the new regulation, and consequently exposed themselves to the loss of the grant altogether. He had also received a complaint, and he should like to obtain papers to see whether it was correct; that in the case of Trinity School, Newington, candidates for pupil-teachers were just before the suspension until March refused because they were not offered under the new Code. Thus, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that when he introduced the Revised Code he had no intention that it should take effect immediately, but that its operation must be postponed until Parliament could pronounce an opinion upon it, seemed to him one of the most extraordinary misapprehensions of what was passing in his office that any right hon. Gentleman could have entertained. He felt he ought to apologize to the House for trespassing upon its attention at such length in respect to matters of detail, but he thought the House ought to be very jealous of the practice of passing important measures during the recess. There was a very curious gravitation of all important administrative measures towards that period of the year. Treaties were made binding on the policy of the country for a long time, or containing the germs of future wars; yet they were all made in the recess, when Parliament could not express an opinion upon them. Up to that time they had only been accustomed to such proceedings by the Foreign Office, and he trusted that that House would interpose its veto to prevent their extension to other departments of the State. It, would he a dangerous precedent if a department, which had been singularly trusted by Parliament upon the faith that every measure which it took should be strictly subject to the control of Parliament, should be permitted during the recess to intro duce changes affecting the disposal of £250,000 of the public money. He wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman would let him have returns connected with the matters discussed on the previous Friday?

MR. LOWE

was understood to say that there would be no objection to the Production of these returns.

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he wished to ask the Vice President of the Council whether the introduction of the new principle of individual examination would necessitate any increase in the number of salaries of the present staff of school inspectors? During the preceding year £65,000 odd, or upwards of two-thirds of the grant, went alone to the payment of the inspectors? At present there were about sixty inspectors—thirty-six full and twenty-four assistant inspectors, and the table of fees was based upon rather a high scale. The thirty-six inspectors received salaries, perhaps, including allowances and augmentations, varying from £700 to £900, exclusive of travelling expenses. The assistants received from £450 to £535, also exclusive of travelling expenses. He was not sure that the number of those gentlemen would not have to be increased; but without having a word to say against the efficiency of the present body, he thought that if the new Code came into operation, thereby considerably diminishing the duties to be performed, a salary of £900 per annum for examining children in their alphabet, and in writing and arithmetic, would look rather formidable.

SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY

said, he had received a copy of a letter addressed by Mr. A. Corrie, from the Council Office, to a clergyman at St. Saviour's National School in Liverpool, and dated August 31, 1861. It appeared that the clergyman in question had written asking how he was to act, and, from the answer he had received, it would seem that some persons in the Committee of Council Office did intend that the Minutes should come into immediate operation. This was the letter— Sir,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and I am directed to inform you that on the 1st. of November next the minute of the 29th of July, 1861, will take effect in your school, and all new appointments will be subject to the Revised Code. He thought it fair to the right hon. Gentleman to read that letter before he replied to the speech of the noble Lord.

MR. MOWBRAY

said, that he had received a letter from a clergyman at New Seaham, in the county of Durham, stating that in December last he was informed from the Council Office, that no more apprenticeships would be sanctioned under the old system. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman how he could reconcile that with his statement in the House, that in future pupil-teachers should serve for five years?

MR. LOWE

Sir, it is impossible to reconcile the letters with my statements; but had the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Durham (Mr. Mowbray) been kind enough to call my attention to the facts before I came to the House, I should no doubt have been prepared to give some explanation. At the Privy Council Office we correspond with some 6,000 or 7,000 schools, and it is impossible for me or any one person to be responsible for every letter; but if hon. Gentlemen would give me some notice, I should be able to answer their questions. I can only say that the letters, as stated, are not in accordance with our practice, because we have in innumerable cases since the notice was given on the 23rd September, consented to the apprenticeship of fresh pupil-teachers under the old Code. I will explain all the facts to the House, but I cannot accept the versions which gentlemen may give to hon. Members of letters which I have never seen. If the right hon. Gentleman will move for papers, or will come to the office and inspect them, I will endeavour to give him every satisfaction; but I cannot undertake to explain everything on the spur of the moment.

Now, as to the charges which the noble Lord has made against me. In the first place, he says, that in a speech last Session I said that the House need not he under any apprehension of our attempting a coup d'é at, because it was impossible that the changes should come into effect until the expiration of the financial year. That was the statement of a simple fact.

LORD ROBERT CECIL

The right hon. Gentleman said it was impossible that "any innovations" could be made.

MR. LOWE

said, the noble Lord catches at the words "any innovations;" but it is impossible for a Member of this House, or a Minister of the Crown, to be so guarded in the words he makes use of as to defy criticism. I may have inadvertently used the expression quoted by the noble Lord, but the meaning of what I said was, that we had not the slightest intention of introducing a change without the consent of Parliament. It is impossible. What the Minutes amount to is this. They are the notices given by the Department of Education of the principle on which the Department will solicit from Parliament the granting of the Vote for Education. As you cannot touch the grants now held under one system and apply them under another, and as you cannot get the money to carry out the new system without the consent of Parliament, it is impossible—granting me to have all the evil intentions which are imputed to me—to make this revolution which is apprehended. Then the noble Lord says I told the House that pupil-teachers under the new Code should be engaged for five years, as they now are.

LORD ROBERT CECIL

And serve, as now, for a period of five years.

MR. LOWE

The noble Lord has read a paragraph from the new Code, in which it is said that the engagement shall be terminated by six months' notice from either party; and he says that is a breach of my undertaking. Hard words, Sir! But does the noble Lord know what is the present engagement of pupil-teachers? Their present engagement is to serve five years, and they are apprenticed by deed; but that deed is not stamped, and it has no validity whatever. That has always been the practice of the office, and it was thought better in introducing a new Code that we should give a really effective agreement, terminable by notice on either side, than perpetuate an agreement which is in the eye of the law a nullity. If the noble Lord examines the agreement which he quoted, he will find that the direction is to serve for a period of five years, and the specimen agreement to be entered into by managers with pupil-teachers names the same period of service. When I spoke of five years, I was alluding to the recommendation of the Commissioners; but they have taken no precautions to ensure continuity of service. The great merit lies in continuity of service; for the pupil-teacher is of little value for the first year, but becomes of value in later years, and unless the precaution be insisted on—which the Commissioners overlook—the full benefit of the agreement is not derived. So what I said was perfectly true, and what I did was in accordance with what I said. We have taken the precaution, subject to this power of terminating the engagement with notice, if it should prove not satisfactory to either side, of keeping the pupil-teachers for a period of five years. Suppose upon a point of detail like this, that, speaking to the best of my opinion and information at the time, I had announced that the Government would not make such an arrangement—would the House, if a subsequent change of opinion took place, charge my original statement upon me as a matter of bad faith? We are accustomed to better treatment. Would the House deem justifiable a fastening on words and syllables an imputation not of change of opinion, but of a wish to deceive and overreach the Houses of Parliament?

Now I come to the more serious part of the noble Lord's charge. He asks a question, but he has relieved me from the necessity of answering it, for he has made answer to himself, and the facts are matter of notoriety. He charges me not only with a want of respect to this House of which I should be exceedingly grieved to be guilty, but with a breach of faith and honour—if I understood him rightly. The framing of the Code was a matter of difficulty, but still greater difficulty attended the arrangements for the transition from one system to another. To those who were charged with that duty it was a matter of anxious care; and if we erred, we did so not from want of consideration, but either from want of ability to grapple with the question or from its inherent difficulties. The principles of the change are mainly two—first, that there shall be no payment except to the manager; and secondly, that we shall pay money only on the individual examination of scholars. When we had settled the principles of the change, we had then to consider how to deal with the interests existing under the present system, which were vested and entitled to be respected. We came to the conclusion, and it certainly was an agreeable one. that pupil-teachers now apprenticed under the present system had rights which we were hound to respect. The faith of the Government has been pledged, and though the agreement was not exactly legal, we will never take any advantage of a flaw in the indenture; hut, at whatever inconvenience, we are hound to see that they do not suffer by the change. The House will see that this is a matter of no slight difficulty; because our own principles being that we are to pay only to the manager, and then only upon examination, the necessity of preserving the vested interests of these pupil-teachers embarrasses and will continue to embarrass the working of the system till the last of them has fulfilled his apprenticeship and been got rid of. Then conies the question as to pupil-teachers apprenticed after the passing of the Minute and before the time when it was to come into operation. The pupil-teachers engaged before the issue of the Minute had no reason to suppose their interests would be interfered with by the Government; they had no notice of any change, and we felt bound to respect their interests. But those engaged after the passing of the Minute stand on a totally different footing, and have no claim of vested interests to set up against the Government or the public, for of their non-vesting they had previous notice. There fore we decided that pupil-teachers engaged after the Minute was agreed to should not be engaged by the Government upon the existing terms, but by the mangers under the terms which would come into force when the Minute itself subsequently became law. That we did, because we thought vested interests meant reasonable expectations; and when teachers had notice that we were about to change the system, they had no longer a reasonable expectation that the system would continue which entitled them to bring claims against the public. We did that—whether rightly or wrongly I do not shrink from the issue—entirely with a view to the public interest, and to prevent further vested interests from accruing. Up to the 23rd of September that rule was acted on, and the House will see that the last thing we thought of was to withdraw the matter from their cognizance. Instead of dealing with £250,000 a year, the noble Lord might have said £300,000; but as regards these pupil-teachers, we are only dealing with a few who were elected between the time of the passing and the promulgation of the Minute, to replace others who had completed their apprenticeship. In placing these not on the footing of the old pupil-teachers, we felt we could not do any serious or permanent mischief; because if the House should adopt the Revised Code, as I trust they will do, the parties will then be placed in the position which they were led to expect; whereas if the House should reject the Revised Code, by a single Minute these pupil-teachers can be placed on the same footing as if they had been engaged by the Government under the old terms, and no prejudice will be done to them. The noble Lord truly says, a considerable ferment arose in the country. My noble Friend Earl Granville was at the time in Ireland in attendance on Her Majesty. I was on the Continent; but I returned on the 17th of September, and at once put myself in communication with Earl Granville. Though we felt that we had honestly and conscientiously exercised our best discretion, we did not think it advisable to allow persons to do what the noble Lord has done to-night—that is, to distract attention from the real merits of the controversy by discussions as to our discretion and wisdom; we showed a more conciliatory spirit, and instead of leaving it in the state we placed it originally, we suspended the Minute absolutely. We did that on the 23rd of September, and since then we have acted consistently—I heard for the first time to-night that there has been any deviation from that practice—as if this Minute had never existed at all. We may be wrong in the view we took originally, and as we have seen fit to retract, it does not, perhaps, lie in my mouth to say differently. I only ask the House to see how the view of affairs differs, as stated by me, from that which has been stated by the noble Lord. I can only regret that he has viewed our conduct so unfavourably. I assure the House that the matter is one of enormous difficulty. We do not pretend to be free from error; we are conscious of having made many. I bow with submission to any hon. Gentleman who finds fault with the intellectual part of the work, which is fairly open to any hostile criticism that may he brought against it. But I speak both for the noble Lord and myself when I ask the House to believe that we are utterly incapable of doing anything to withdraw the question from the absolute jurisdiction or control of Parliament; or of entertaining the least desire to be wanting in that respect which we owe to the House.

The hon. member for Hants (Mr. Sclater-Booth) has spoken of the salaries of inspectors as excessive. Their salaries begin at £200, and are raised by successive stages of £50 till they reach £600, when they stop, and this maximum rate is not attained till they have been twenty-four years in the service. In addition to the salary of £200 there are allowances for the expenses of travelling and living at hotels—for they are always on the move—amounting to £250 a year; in addition to which, they are reimbursed for any expenses incurrred in connection with the discharge of their official duties. He advances money, and if the amount appears moderate, he is reimbursed. That does not appear to me extravagant pay for gentlemen of the very high class we employ as inspectors. Our rule is, and it has been constantly acted upon, to take the young gentlemen of the greatest distinction we can find from either University; and any one who will compare the names of the inspectors with the University calendars will see that we have enlisted in the service of the public a most distinguished set of men. This Minute will not come into effect until after the 31st of March, 1863, except in the case of certain new schools. No schools now assisted can be examined under the new Minute till after the date I have mentioned. Therefore I have not the least reason to apprehend that during the next financial year there will be any increase of the public expense in this matter. Whatever the ultimate result, I certainly do not contemplate raising the salaries of the inspectors. But it is obvious that when the system does come into effect there will be some increase of expense under this head. I would rather not make any positive declaration on the subject at present, for I might hereafter be accused of breach of faith if I now indicated a plan which subsequent experience might not prove advisable. We shall have the opportunity of trying experiments on a small scale this year; and when the time comes to ask for a vote of money under the new Code, which cannot be in force till next year, then I, or whoever may be in my place, will be prepared to lay fully and fairly before the House the amount of the additional assistance that may be required.