§ MR. PICTON (Leicester)asked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether he has now received any Report of the late School Board election in Aylestone, Leicestershire, and if he can explain how it happened that Mr. Edward West received from the Returning Officer, Mr. Thomas Sheppard, a formal notification, dated November 5, of his legal nomination, and yet was afterwards informed by the same Returning Officer that the nomination was invalid; whether it is a fact that on the day for the withdrawal of nominations Mr. Edward West, with others, attended at the office of the Returning Officer and were informed that all was right; whether, in consequence of the absence from home of the Rev. Mr. Howlett, curate in charge, the clerk to the Returning Officer agreed to keep open the withdrawal of names until the 1250 day after the date legally fixed; whether it was not until two days after the latter date that Mr. West was told his nomination was invalid, on grounds which have since been acknowledged to be false in fact; whether he will reconsider the desirability of giving some reasonable appeal from mistaken or illegal decisions of Returning Officers; and, whether any complaint of the above irregularities has been received from Mr. Charles Coppack, and what answer has been made to it?
§ THE VICE PRESIDENT (Sir WILLIAM HART DYKE) (Kent, Dartford), in reply, said, that the Returns of the Election had now been received. The Department had no information of what had occurred, beyond the statement of Mr. Coppack that the Returning Officer refused to accept Mr. West's nomination. A reply was made to that communication, in the words of my answer the other night that the decision of the Returning Officer was by law final. The practice I am now asked to alter has been in operation for 18 years without complaint. There is no intention of disturbing it.