§ 63. Mr. TREVELYANasked the President of the Board of Education whether the Standing Joint Committees on teachers' salaries, in accepting and adopting the Burnham award, informed him that they did so subject to the payments of grant by the Board being continued on a basis not less than then in force; and whether he then made any comment on that proviso?
§ Lord E. PERCYI have been informed that the Standing Joint Committee passed a resolution in the sense indicated by the right hon. Member, but I do not find that it was ever formally forwarded to me. It has, so far as I knew, never been claimed that anything said or done in connection with the arbitration proceedings could commit the Government or Parliament in the slightest degree to the continuance of a particular grant formula or grant system, nor could I for a moment admit such a claim if it were made; but I have every intention of making such grants to authorities as will enable them to continue the payment of the allocated scales, and I have already made it clear that such payment will constitute a condition of grant.
§ Mr. TREVELYANWill the Noble Lord go a little further into what has happened; and has he seen a statement made yesterday by Sir George Lunn, who was the spokesman for the local authorities on the Burnham Committee, in which ho says:
I tell you deliberately teachers' scales of salary are in jeopardy all over the country. Many local authorities only accepted them under duress, an I many accepted them only on condition that the Government continued to pay the grants then in force,
§ Lord E. PERCYNo, I have not seen that statement, and I do not accept the conclusion which the right hon. Gentle- 665 man appears to draw from it—that the local authorities are likely to be put into a position, by my policy, where they will not be able to pay those scales, or, in the event of being in that position, where they will not be willing to pay the scales. I intend to see that those scales and paid.