§ 46 and 47. Mr. LEACHasked the Prime Minister (1) if the Patronage Secretary to the. Treasury was speaking on behalf of and with the authority of the Government when addressing a meeting on the education question at Shipley, on Saturday, 3rd May, in saying that it was a scandalous humiliation that scores of good men, the best men in the land, through the inequality and the injustice of the present law" should have been compelled 2501 to passively resist, that of that fact the Government was deeply conscious, and that he was able to say to Nonconformists that in any Education Bill introduced by the Government the first consideration would be the removal of this grievance; and (2) when the Government intends to remove the inequality of the Education Act of 1902, under which persons who elected the Government to power have suffered imprisonment, the spoiling of their goods, and the insults of some magistrates; and is he aware that, though five Education Bills have been introduced into the House of Commons and four Members of the Government have occupied the position of President of the Board of Education since lie and his colleagues pledged themselves to remove these grievances, their pledges are still unfulfilled?
§ The PRIME MINISTERThe Government are fully aware of the importance of this matter, and my hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, in the speech to which the hon. Member refers, expressed generally our views with regard to it. The Government intend to introduce next Session proposals to deal with this grievance, which will, I trust, prove satisfactory, but I am not prepared to anticipate them at present.