HC Deb 06 April 1911 vol 23 cc2548-53

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Gulland.]

Mr. ASTOR

The President of the Board of Education this afternoon, in answer to a question I addressed to him, said that a scheme which was promised by that Department four years ago, dealing with a local charity at Plymouth, was not yet ready. I may state that due notice was sent to the right hon. Gentleman this evening that I intended to raise the matter. In his reply he stated that no application had been received from the trustees of this particular trust in Plymouth, and therefore he appeared to suggest that the blame for the delay fell upon the trustees. I may inform the House that this matter refers to Hele's Charity, a trust founded some 200 years ago to provide education for poor boys in Plymouth and district. There are two points that I wish to bring before the House specially. First, that owing to the mismanagement or delay, the boys who ought properly to find themselves educated by the trust have not been able to be so, and, secondly, I wish to draw attention specifically to the reply of the President of the Board of Education to-day.

The Hele Charity School was closed in 1907 by mutual consent of the trustees and the President of the Board of Education. It was arranged there should be a conference that autumn to decide the lines upon which the trust should be run in the future. The chair at that conference was taken by a representative of the Board of Education, and, after considerable discussion, all those present at that conference agreed unanimously to the lines of a proposal on which this trust could be run. Six months afterwards the trustees applied to that Department for this scheme to which all had been looking forward. The application was acknowledged, and the reply of the Board of Education said that owing to pressure of work, in the Drafting Department I believe, they had not been able to prepare the scheme. Six months later another application was sent, and this time, when it was acknowledged, a different reason was given to the effect that the Charity Commissioners were inquiring into the local charities. The trustees waited another year, and then applied again for this scheme which had been promised repeatedly. This time a different reason again was given, namely, the appointment of a Departmental Committee. Again, in May, 1910, the trustees wrote applying for an interview. They wanted to come up and find out why this scheme, which had been promised, was not yet ready. The Department refused to receive them; refused the interview. Finally, on 29th March, 1911, a letter was sent to the Board of Education with the words in it to which the right hon. Gentleman in his reply to-day appeared to attach particular importance; that is to Bay, the words "a formal application."

The question I wish to put before the House is, who is to blame for the delay in connection with this trust scheme? The right hon. Gentleman, by his answer to- day, gave the House to understand that the trustees, because they had not applied for this scheme, were to blame both for the delay and mismanagement. Whatever may be the case, the result has been that this money, amounting to an income of about £500 a year, has not been used as originally intended by the donor 200 years ago, the money has accumulated, it is not being used for the purpose of education at the present moment, and the Board of Education have no scheme, although they have been repeatedly written to upon the subject. Lastly, the President of the Board of Education, by his answer to-day, has accused the trustees of neglecting their duty in not having applied for this particular scheme, but, as a matter of fact, if any blame is due to anyone, it is due to the negligence of the Board of Education.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. C. P. Trevelyan)

The hon. Member who has just sat down said that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Education had blamed the trustees of this charity for not sending in a formal application. It is quite true they did not send in the formal application, without which we cannot take any action in the matter, but he added that the Board understood that the trustees were quite ready to apply.

Mr. ASTOR

Have they not, applied?

Mr. TREVELYAN

They have not formally applied. If the hon. Member will read the actual words of the answer of my right hon. Friend he will see that he said that "no formal application was in fact made, but it has been understood by us (the Board) that the trustees were ready to apply." My right hon. Friend certainly does not wish to cast any blame upon the trustees, and does not wish to imply that they are responsible. I agree that the delay in this case is most unfortunate, and no one is more aware of this than the President of the Board of Education. If this scheme were the only one it would be, of course, quite indefensible that it should have been delayed three or four years, but, so far from this being the only one, there are at this moment a large number awaiting attention. At this time the situation is this: Since the year 1902 the Board of Education have been utterly unable to keep pace with the number of schemes which are required under the Act of that year owing to the fact that a very large number of endowments which had been applied for school purposes ceased to be of any value for those purposes, because those purposes were handed over to the local authorities and put upon the rates and taxes. An enormous number of endowments ceased to be applicable to the purposes to which they had been applied; and, in consequence, hundreds of schemes all over the country were required in order to find new purposes to which the money would have to be applied.

At the Board of Education there is only a limited staff, and all these schemes, whether they are important, whether they concern large or small sums of money, give rise to various difficult legal details. Scheme-making is a very laborious process. It takes a long time, it has to be done very exactly, and in every case the highest legal officers in the Board have to attend to the scheme, and have to go through all the details before it can possibly be published by the Board. These officials have an enormous amount of other work besides the scheme work, which is generally a great deal more pressing than scheme-making. The result is, and we admit it, that there are waiting scores of schemes all over the country which it is very desirable should be dealt with. When my right hon. Friend began his duties he found this difficulty: that there were scores of schemes waiting which it was very undesirable should be delayed any longer. Of course, he had to consider what action he would take. It might be said that he ought to have applied for a larger number of lawyers to do the work at the Board of Education, but that would have been an immense public expense in order to do a thing quickly, which in most cases is not of very great importance in regard to the individual details. What he did was to appoint a Departmental Committee, over which I have been presiding, in order to inquire into the best way of dealing with all these endowments we have got upon our hands. I am not in a position at the moment to say what the Committee have reported because the Report is not published, but we have finished our work and have made recommendations and I very much hope, before very long, some means may be found to deal not only with this scheme but with any other. No doubt there are many other Members who have schemes in their Constituencies which they think we ought to deal with. It is not only this scheme, but the scores of schemes which have resulted from the 1902 Act which ought to be dealt with. I hope they will be dealt with soon by some general method. Until that is done there must be a large number of schemes in arrear, and in this case my right hon. Friend has done what he can do now. He has given special orders that this one should be dealt with at once. I hope that will satisfy the hon. Member as far as his scheme is concerned, but that does not meet the real difficulty we are under of the large number of other schemes which are still waiting to be dealt with. We give him a preference, and I am very glad that he should have it. As soon as he sends in formal application it shall be dealt with at once. But no great improvement in this matter can be expected until we deal in rather a vigorous and drastic way with the general question of all these small, or comparatively small, educational endowments which you find all over the country. I hope the promise of my right hon. Friend to deal with the matter the moment the actual formal application is sent in will satisfy the hon. Member.

Lord BALCARRES

In the first place the formal application has been sent in. I do not know how long it takes to carry it from Plymouth to London, but it was sent in days ago. An application which I think anyone would look upon as formal has been sent in at regular intervals during the last four years. The clerk to the trustees has written constantly to say: "I am directed by my trustees to apply for a scheme, a scheme having been promised by the Board." The speech of the Under-Secretary really shows that there is a sort of paralysis at the Board of Education. He says you have hundreds of these schemes. All I can say is the Department has no business to close schools unless it is prepared in the immediate future to provide new schools. This school with an income of £500 a year, quite unsectarian and doing excellent work, has been hung up since 1907, and the money is simply lying idle accumulating in the bank. He says there has been great delays. Of course there has.

The efforts of the Board of Education are not being devoted to this kind of thing. They are being frittered away in litigation. Only to-day a decision went against the Board of Education. That takes time and wastes money, and occupies the attention of the Board. Weeks of time have been occupied in dealing with the Swansea case. What steps are being taken really to deal with these matters in a businesslike way? The hon. Gentleman told us that the Committee has reported, but we know perfectly well what that means. It means weeks and months of delay before a general scheme can be introduced. A scheme on the lines of one of the Bills introduced in the 1906 Parliament dealing with elementary education has been promised. I presume that will have priority over schemes dealing with these schools under charity trusts. I beg the Under-Secretary to remember that his Department is gradually getting a reputation for being most unbusinesslike in its management of these educational affairs.

And it being half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Thirty minutes after Eleven o'clock.