ELEMENTARY EDUCATION (DEFECTIVE AND EPILEPTIC CHILDREN) BILL. (Hansard, 17 July 1914)

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I object to this Bill, and if hon. Members will look at Clause 2 they will see it says:—
"A local education authority, before deciding what provision shall be made for the education of a mentally defective child, shall endeavour to ascertain the wishes of the parents and shall, so far as possible, give effect to their wishes."
I have always understood that it was the parents who should guide the conduct and behaviour of their children, and that the local education authority should be brought into the matter to guide, so far as possible, the wishes of the parents, seems to me a most surprising Regulation to come from the so-called Liberal party. Then Clause 4 says:—
"If a local education authority are satisfied, after consultation with the parent of a mentally defective or epileptic child over seven years of age, that the parent is not making suitable provision for the child's education they may require the parent of the child to send the child to a certified class or school suitable for the child, and if he fails to do so may apply to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction.
that no order shall be made requiring the child to be sent to a certified class or school which is not within reach of the child's residence or to a boarding school without the consent in writing of the parent, unless it is proved to the satisfaction of the Court that such consent is unreasonably withheld, or that the parent cannot be found, but consent shall not be deemed to be unreasonably withheld if withheld with the bonâ fide intention of benefiting the child."
Who is to ascertain, or how is a Court of Summary Jurisdiction to find out, that the consent of the parent has been unreasonably withheld with the idea of bonâ fide benefiting the child. Of course, the majority of parents, in whatever rank of life they may be, are desirous of bonâ fide benefiting their children. This is another 2383 of those Bills which are passed and practically not enforced. As the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin said on a similar Bill, these measures are enforced on poor parents who do not know the law, and are unable to employ solicitors or counsel. Therefore, when threatened with proceedings before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction they immediately give way because they do not understand what the effect of such proceedings may be. Only last Monday a defective person, eighteen years of age, was brought before me in a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, and I asked the clerk how we were to deal with the case, stating that two or three years ago a Mental Deficiency Act was passed. He replied that there were no buildings yet erected under the Act to which persons in this condition could be sent, and it only remained for us to send this person to the workhouse for a week. That shows the absurdity of these Acts. We are supposed to be legislating for the people. What we are really doing is preventing the fathers and mothers of such persons discharging their proper responsibilities towards their children. I think that parents are ready to recognise then-obligations, and that in the majority of cases they do recognise those obligations, and look after their children. But to come to this House and pass Bills of this description, which in nine cases out of ten are never enforced at all because the buildings are not provided to which these persons can be sent, and then to go on public platforms and say, "See what we are doing towards social reform," is to my mind an absolute absurdity. It is not what Parliament was intended for, and it does harm to that self-reliant feeling which has always hitherto distinguished Englishmen. I do not intend to divide the House upon the Bill, not because I do not think it is a bad Bill, but because the time is getting late for a Friday afternoon, and also because I think it is going to be a rod in pickle for the Radical party and Government. I do not think the ordinary person likes to find a local education authority, which practically means the head teacher, coming down and saying, "You must send your children somewhere or we will take you to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction." It is not their idea of liberty any more than it is mine, but it is the idea of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite as much as their idea of liberty of speech 2384 in the House of Commons, seeing that nobody can speak but the Front Bench. Their idea is that nobody can do anything without the authority of an official they set up. Under these circumstances I in many ways am not sorry that this Bill is going to pass, because it will open the eyes of the poorer classes to the foolishness of trusting hon. and right hon Gentlemen opposite. I should not be surprised if all the various Acts which have been passed restricting the liberty of the subject recoil upon the heads of the right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench.

§ Mr. GOLDSMITH
I wish to put one or two points to the hon. Gentleman who represents the Board of Education, and one of which I unsuccessfully tried to raise on the Committee stage. This Bill is called the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Bill. The object of the Bill is to amend another Act of 1899 which has a similar title. That was an Act not only for mentally defective but also for physically defective children, and provided that any child which could not benefit from education in an ordinary school, either by physical or mental defect, was to be provided for in special classes or in a special school. I wish to ask why in this Bill it is only proposed to deal with the mentally defective child? I should have thought—and I have always been of opinion—that it is more important to provide education for the physically defective child which has a normal brain than to provide elaborate and expensive education for a child which is not normal. In this case you only deal with the physically defective child if it is, also mentally defective, and in that case it will be dealt with under the Bill, but the physically defective child who is not not mentally defective will be kept out of the school altogether. Surely that is an absurd proposition. There, are some education authorities like the London County Council which have taken full advantage of the Act of 1899. I myself think the schools which that body has erected are far too expensive, but they have availed of the Act. Other education authorities have not done so. I believe the President of the Board of Education told us on one or two occasions that it was intended to make provision for those crippled children. Why, I ask, is the Bill confined to mentally defective children. We were told in Committee by the 2385 President that under this Bill larger Grants were going to be paid to the local education authorities. I believe that the Grant for a mentally-defective child in a day school is about £4, which the right hon. Gentleman said he would increase to £6. But that was to depend on the new Grants promised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Budget. I would like to ask, therefore, whether the new Education Grants contained in the Finance Bill, and then in the Revenue Bill, which now no longer exists, are to be payable in any case?
Another point is that in many cases local education authorities could take physically defective, and in some cases mentally defective, children, but they cannot do so, because the children live a long way from the ordinary school, and the authorities have not power to board them out near the school. That is a power which ought to be given to local education authorities. It was contained in one of the Bills brought forward some years ago, but dropped. The right hon. Gentleman himself has confessed that that is a power which ought to be conferred. It would be much cheaper in many cases than building new schools for children who can very well attend the ordinary schools if provision could be made for them to be boarded out near those schools. I have no intention of opposing the Bill, but I agree with the hon. Baronet that last year we passed a Mental Deficiency Act, under which new institutions and homes were to be built. Those homes and institutions have not been provided, and we are passing another Bill this year to provide more institutions, more schools, and more residential homes. It would have been much better if the Government had waited until the Act of last year had really been carried out before proposing this new measure, which at present is not really required. I have always been of opinion that one set of institutions would have done very well both for the people who come under the Mentally Deficiency Act and for the children who will come under this Bill. That was the opinion of the Royal Commission which inquired into the matter some years ago. They recommended one Board of Control and one set of institutions. We have not got it, because the officials of the Board of Education like to have as many schools and as many children under their power as possible; they do not want to hand 2386 them over to anybody else. If it were not for the officials, if it were not for the fact that unfortunately the President of the Board of Education is entirely in the hands of his officials, I am sure that we should have had one Bill, one Board of Control, and one set of institutions.

§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Trevelyan)
I should like to remind the hon. Baronet that a great deal has been done by my right hon. Friend during the progress of the Bill to secure the parent, about whom he is so anxious, against any tyranny on the part of the local education authorities. As a matter of fact, the parent's consent in writing is necessary, and if the consent is withheld with the bonâ fide intention of benefiting the child, the Courts are bound to uphold the parent. Therefore it is only when the parent is absolutely indifferent to the welfare of the child that the child will be taken from him and placed in a residential school. I really do not therefore think that even the hon. Baronet need be very much afraid of the results of the Bill. In regard to the Grants, I can assure the hon. Member opposite that they are going to be given this year. With respect to the points referring to the physically defective, of course we shall be very glad to deal with them in due time. This Bill is a corollary to the larger mentally defective Bill; therefore we do not deal with any other problem except the mentally defective. That is the simple explanation of the limited character of the Bill.