§ 65. Mr. BROADasked the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the liabilities imposed on various local education authorities by the practice of the governors of various institutions placing children with foster parents within a few months of their birth in an area other than that of their birth, or to which their parents belong; that the residence of such children in the said area may be anything over six months, but that they are usually returned to the institution at the age of three years; and, as under the Education (Institutional Children) Act, 1923, the area in which these children have been temporarily resident is held to be chargeable for their education, will he take steps to secure such amendment to the law as will provide that a child resident in an institution or boarded out by and at the expense of that institution shall be deemed to belong to the area of its parents, or, if illegitimate, of its mother?
§ Lord E. PERCYI would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the hon. and gallant. Member for the Waterloo Division of Lancashire (Captain Bullock) on the 16th March. I am aware of the particular difficulty to which the hon. Member refers, but I think the remedy he suggests in the last part of his question would merely give rise to other difficulties, since it is often impossible to say to what area the parents of a child who is maintained in an institution belong.