§ MR. HOWELL (Bethnal Green, N.E.)I beg to ask the hon. Member for Merionethshire whether the Charity Commissioners will consent to lay before this House a list of the Charity Trustees in London who, in disobedience to the law — "The Charitable Trusts Act, 1855," 18 & 19 Vic. c. 124, s. 44— omit to send in their accounts to the Commissioners, giving the name and address of such trustees, and stating whom, if any, hold the office of Justice of the Peace; whether the Charity Commissioners will abstain from using for the purposes of education any more of the moneys originally given to the poor of London for non-educational purposes 816 until the Committee on Secondary Education have reported; and whether, in framing schemes under the Charitable Trusts Acts for public or parish charities in London, educational or otherwise, the Commissioners will cease to appoint co-optive Trustees?
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY CHARITY COMMISSIONER (Mr. T. E. ELLIS,) MerionethshireThe Charity Commissioners will offer no objection to a Motion for a Return in terms which are acceptable to my hon. Friend. The Commissioners have not failed to regulate their dealings under the Endowed Schools Acts with non-educational endowments by the recommendations of the Select Committee of the House which inquired in 1886–7 into the working of these Acts, but in view of the provision of the Acts in this respect they are unable to do more than to undertake to continue so to regulate their action in the future. Attaching, as the Charity Commissioners do, and for the reasons stated in their Report for 1892, considerable importance to the presence of a co-optative element on bodies of Trustees of charities generally, a view which they do not understand to differ from that of Parliament, so far as evidenced by Reports of Committees, they are unable to give the required pledge.