§
Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session (hereinafter referred to as 'the said Act') to raise to fifteen years the age up to which parents are required to cause their children to receive efficient elementary instruction and to attend school, and to make provision for maintenance allowances in respect of children attending school up to that age who are over the age of fourteen years, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any sums by which the grants-in-aid of education payable by the Board of Education to local authorities, under section one hundred and eighteen of the Education Act, 1921 (as amended by any subsequent enactment), and the regulations made thereunder are increased by reason of the provision under the
2007
said Act of maintenance allowances at the rate of five shillings a week.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
§ Mr. ANNESLEY SOMERVILLEBefore this Resolution is passed, I want to make a point. The Resolution is a contradiction in terms, and the first Clause of the Bill which repeats a phrase which occurs in the Resolution, is also a contradiction in terms. The Resolution asks the House to provide money to give efficient elementary instruction to children up to the age of 15 years. If the instruction be elementary, it will not be efficient, and if it be efficient, it will not be elementary.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThis Money Resolution only authorises the expenditure of money for maintenance allowances.
§ Mr. SOMERVILLEMay I call attention to the wording of the Resolution?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Gentleman may call attention to the wording of the Resolution, but it would be better to keep to the substance of the Resolution, which simply authorises the expenditure of money for maintenance allowances. That is all it deals with.
§ Mr. SOMERVILLEIs it not possible to endeavour to show that the Resolution asks for money for maintenance allowances and for purposes that are inconsistent with the wording of the Resolution?
§ Mr. SPEAKERI do not think that it does. I do not think that the purposes are inconsistent with the wording of the Resolution.
§ Mr. SOMERVILLEThe maintenance allowances are for the purpose of providing, as the Resolution says, efficient elementary instruction for children up to the age of 15 years. The point I want to make is that these maintenance allowances should not be granted, and that the instruction to be provided is not elementary instruction, but advanced. I may be told that the phrase "elementary instruction" is a technical phrase, but, in view of the great work of re-organisation which is now going on all through our educational system, the object of which is to provide, not elementary education, but advanced or secondary 2008 education, I maintain that the House is being asked to provide money for purposes to which it will not be put. The education for which the money is asked is not elementary, but advanced, and, if it is not advanced, the Resolution and the Bill are a fraud, and, in justice to the community, ought not to be passed.
Captain WATERH OUSEI am more than surprised that this Resolution was moved in a monosyllabic way by the Minister. It involves a vast sum of money, and yet he does not try and justify it on the Report stage. When he moved it in Committee he made a two minutes' speech, which occupied about half a column in the OFFICIAL REPORT. and I feel very strongly that the House is not being properly treated by the right hon. Gentleman in this very vital matter. I can quite understand that. he should wish to wind up the debate in Committee, but why should not the Financial Secretary to the Treasury have proposed this Resolution? Is it not his duty to safeguard the expenditure of the country? We know what a most lucid speaker the Financial Secretary can be. Yesterday afternoon be accepted a Resolution on behalf of the Government. and at the same time made it perfectly clear that he did not intend to do anything about it. If he had accepted this Resolution in the same way it would have been a relief to many of us on this side of the House, To ask us in this way to accept what is really a token Vote for an expenditure of £15,000,000 to £20,000,000 a year is not a fair proceeding.
The right hon. Gentleman is asking for a sum for maintenance, but a tremendous increase in annual expenditure and in capital expenditure upon education hinges on it. If this Resolution passes it will mean that, one way and another, the country will be involved in an expenditure of something like £100,000,000 a year on education. [Laughter.] Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen laugh. Whether they laugh because we are spending £100,000,000 or because they have not taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the facts, I cannot say, but to those on this side of the House who realise what our taxation means, and to the unemployed men and women whose jobs are being taken from them because of increased taxation, there is nothing for 2009 laughter at this fresh burden. The Minister has thought well, both inside and outside this House, to sneer at his school and to sneer at what he was good enough to call his class, but he ought not to sneer at this House or treat it with any lack of respect. When he wound up on the Committee stage he did not deal in any way with the very weighty arguments adduced by Members above the Gangway or by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon). He said, for example:
it is not good enough now to turn round and say we cannot spend another £8,000,000, or whatever it is to do the thing which the nation is expecting us to do."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th November, 1930; eel. 1630. Vol. 244.]I submit that that is not a proper way to act when asking for such a tremendous increase in our expenditure. That statement was studiously vague, because the Minister of Education does not know bow much money he will require to foot the bill. I feel very strongly that the financial position of this country does not warrant all this expenditure. At the present moment we are the most highly taxed nation in the world, and we spend larger sums of money upon education from rates and taxes than any other nation. Our children are kept at school longer than any other children in Europe. [An HON. MEMBER: "Whose children?"] I say "our children," and I am speaking for all British fathers and mothers. During the last six months the right hon. Gentleman has sanctioned £4,500,000 of capital expenditure and that has to be added to this tremendous bill.Capitalised, the proposed expenditure would amount to a sum far greater than that which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) said was necessary first to cure and then to tackle unemployment. Hon. Members have had their attention drawn to various loans which have been raised in the City of London. I am not going to enter into a financial argument now, but I wish to say that any hon. Members who can confuse capital and income expenditure should not get up in this House and say what this country can or cannot afford to spend.
I shall probably be told that what I am saying is the old, old story that we 2010 cannot afford this and that. There comes a time when even the old, old story becomes painfully true. This reminds me of the time when Delilah took the scissors and clipped Samson's hair. It may be said that Samson's strength did not entirely disappear with the first clip, but we have been clipped again and again until at last, even this country, in all its strength, will be unable to bear the increasing burden which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen seem anxious to impose upon us. Perhaps it may be said that I hold an old-fashioned view of my duty as a Member of Parliament. I came, the other day, on a passage which I have no doubt that a good many other hon. Members, and especially the right hon. Gentlemen had read, and it contains this sentence:
The private. Member still regarded himself as sent by his constituency to keep watch on the king's Ministers—placemen, as they were opprobriously called; to curb their schemes of private avarice, and thwart their plots against the liberties of the land.That was in the days of Queen Anne. [Interruption.] Yes, Queen Anne is dead, but I hope it will be a long time before the duty of private Members to safeguard the liberties of the subject becomes dead in this Chamber. We have our duty to do, and there is no more important duty than to safeguard those liberties; and there is no more sure way of doing away with the liberties of the subject than piling on taxation until the subject is unable to live in this country at all.I now want to come to the main theme of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said that the making of these grants was going to be a real help in solving the unemployment problem. In what way can the changing of an Unemployment Bill to an Education Bill really help? If he believes that it is going to be a help, why should he not go further and take a leaf out of the book of Denmark, which has been so often quoted in this House, and than which there is no country in Europe more fit to be copied in the matter of education? Why should not he have broad schemes of adult education, and, on the 1st April next year, not only take these children and give them education, but take the whole of the unemployed and start a system of adult education for them, giving them, not unemployment benefit, but a maintenance allowance?
2011 It does not matter that there are not houses or schools in which to put them. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that in only half the cases have local authorities substantially finished his building programme. It does not matter that there are not the teachers; there are plenty of secondary schoolboys and girls, and I am afraid young fellows who have been at the universities among the unemployed who could take on the job. The right hon. Gentleman admits that he has not a sufficient number of trained teachers, and yet he is going to bring in people to do the teaching. Why should he not extend this scheme and bring in all the unemployed, and go down to posterity as the man who at one blow cured the unemployment problem and brought adult education to a pitch of perfection never before known in the world? The real unemployment problem is not one of transferring children from one place to another; is that production per individual and nationally does not keep up with consumption. This Resolution, in my view, is almost unique, because at one and the same time it will decrease production nationally and by individuals and will increase the burden which has to be borne.
Finally, what are the practical difficulties which are going to face the right hon. Gentleman when he gets down to them and comes to spend this tremendous sum? Is the way in which he is going to spend it clear from the Financial Resolution? For example, are all the children at elementary, secondary or private or public schools, whose parents come within these means limits, going to get this 5s. a week between the ages of 14 and 15? Are the children at secondary schools going to get their small allowances for clothing or boots or books from the age of 11 to the age of 14, are they to get £13 for one year, and are they then to go back to their original allowance? I think there is no doubt that that is what is down in the Bill, and I shall be glad if the Minister will say whether or not that is what is intended.
How is this new Bill going to be administered as far as the parents are concerned? On the Committee stage the right hon. Gentleman said: 2012
There is nothing to prevent a local education authority, if it likes, making inquiries.''—[OFFICIAL REPORT], 11th November, 1930; col. 1628; Vol. 244.]Did he mean to encourage local authorities not to make these inquiries or did he intend that the Bill should be worked in the way we think it is going to be worked? He said that in 95 cases out of 100 it will be perfectly obvious whether or not the dole would be paid to any particular family and that it embraced all miners and all agricultural workers. What about miners in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Leicestershire, where the wife probably works part of her time in a textile factory? What about short time and overtime? Is the right hon. Gentleman thinking that because the wage level is so and so, therefore the income level is identical, because in Yorkshire there are tens of thousands of people who should be drawing their £3 a week and who are very fortunate if they go home at the end of the week with £2 on an average. It is not simple to work out the exact income over 12 months. Then what about the agricultural labourer:" If he has an allotment, if he has potatoes and milk, if his wife is working for a farmer and gets meals, is that going to be taken as part of his income? What sort of regulation is the right hon. Gentleman going to bring in to meet these and analogous cases? If he thinks it is so simple, why does he not incorporate the regulations in the Bill It seems to me that he and his advisers know it is going to be very difficult to frame these regulations and he is keeping them outside the Bill so that he can by administrative action alter them as and when he likes. I do not believe this Measure will ever come on to the Statute Book. Ti it does, I am convinced that the Minister will have either to admit all these children to the grant or to alter the regulation and confine it to those who need it and are in necessitous circumstances.
Major DAVIESI am quite aware that many hon. Members are in a double attitude, on the one hand of hilarity and on the other of anxiety. At the same time, I feel that the Resolution is one of such enormous importance that we cannot allow even the Report stage simply to drift away in a formal manner, because the Resolution confined to the provision 2013 of the maintenance grant outlined in the Bill is really the seat of the whole matter. It is in a way an enabling Bill. It is the measure that enables all the rest of the right hon. Gentleman's great scheme for extending education to be put into operation. From that point of view, I want to say a few words upon the matter which we are now considering. We found some difficulty in the earlier stages of this Measure, both on Second Reading and in Committee on the Money Resolution, in being able to pin down hon. Gentlemen opposite to points of our criticism. They have adopted a protean-like attitude. If we took it from an educational point of view we were told that that was not its primary point, and that it was to give the children of the country another year of childhood. If we directed our criticisms to that point, we were told that this was a question of making our future citizens more and better equipped for the life that lay before them. If we pointed out that that was a very long time for which to plan, and that a more immediate result was desirable in the critical state of unemployment in the country, we were told that this was a question of keeping so many children off the labour market to enable others to take their place. Finally, this was heralded in most quarters on the opposite side of the House as being primarily, not a matter of education, but an unemployment Measure. Hon. Members will recall an occasion when the Home Secretary, standing on this side of the House, and drawing himself up to his full height, said in stentorian tones this platitude, that the way to cure unemployment was to provide employment, and hon. Members cheered him to the echo. Although that may be his platitude, there is underlying it a very real truth, and that is that all these Measures for dealing with doles, or whatever you like to call them, for unemployment are not helping to find employment for our people.
During an earlier debate this Session the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), speaking on the Address to the King's Speech, expressed surprise at the paucity of the performance of his own Front Bench. If he had had the questionable privilege which we have had on this side of the House of getting a front view of that stock of artistic treasures 2014 which decorate the Front Bench, he would not have been surprised at anything they might have done or might not have done.
§ Mr. MILLSOn a point of Order. Is not the hon. and gallant Member flagrantly disobeying the Rules regarding this Money Resolution?
§ Mr. SPEAKERI am waiting to see when the hon. and gallant Member is coming to the Resolution.
Major DAVIESI do not desire to occasion you anxiety on that matter for one moment, and I will come immediately to the Resolution. This Resolution, narrowed as it is to the question of maintenance, admits the whole implication that the Measure for which this Resolution is merely enabling machinery is not an educational Measure at all, but one for the provision of doles, because no contributory conditions attach to them. As such, it is not directly helping employment, but merely subsidising a form of unemployment. I do not deny, none of us do, that in the conditions existing today provision has to be made for those out of work. Therefore, it is a masquerading Education Bill, which, with its Financial Resolution confined entirely to the question of maintenance, is not really helping in any way the solution of the unemployment question. This Financial Resolution has had the support of hon. Members opposite from different points of view. There are those who really believe that, somehow or other, it is going to help education. The President of the Board of Education is convinced that on that matter—
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe question whether the education is a good thing or not does not arise out of this Resolution. The question is whether maintenance allowances should be given.
Major DAVIESI agree, but is it not in order for me to rehearse what seems to be the reasons prompting those who supported this Resolution in its Committee stage?
§ Mr. SPEAKERWe are not in the Committtee stage now. We are in the. Report stage.
Major DAVIESAre we not dealing with precisely the same Resolution that was before us in the Committee stage, 2015 and is it not in order for me to show why this Resolution should not have received the support that it did?
§ Mr. SPEAKERNo. We are dealing with the Report stage, and I have laid down the rules of debate on the Report stage. I have nothing to do with the Committee stage.
Major DAVIESI will try to keep within the Rules of Order, and I thought I was doing so, inasmuch as we are on the Report stage of a Financial Resolution which seeks to provide maintenance. I will try to point out what are the implications of that Resolution. An hon. Friend of mine aroused a considerable amount of ire in criticising the Measure. He was misunderstood in certain criticisms he made. It is supposed by many speakers that this grant of 5s. per week maintenance to parents on account of their children attending for an additional year at school is going to be an attraction to them. If hon. Members think that that is the case, they are not in close touch with the point of view of the parents up and down the country, even from the lowest point of view, that of mere shillings and pence. If you are going to provide for that one year a maintenance allowance to the household of 5s. per week in respect of the child, you must balance against that what the child would be earning, and that would be something in the neighbourhood of 12s. a week. Therefore, from that low point of view, this is not the attraction to the parents in the way that many hon. Members opposite seem to think it is going to be, and the Measure will not be popular.
Moreover, we have to bear in mind that this Financial Resolution is going to bring about such a state of affairs as will impose additional burdens upon the ratepayers, and that will make a very heavy call upon the resources of the country as a. whole. It is not possible to distinguish whether you are paying it out of rates or out of taxes; the two are tied together by this Resolution. It comes to this, that by this camouflaged Education Bill we are going to pile an additional heavy burden directly on to the taxpayer and indirectly on to the ratepayer. It is elementary economics that the way to spread unemployment is to add to the burdens under which industry is at present struggling, and, if we admit that this 2016 maintenance allowance will relieve unemployment to the extent of 150,000, it must be remembered that we are going to pile on an additional burden which will more than counterbalance this hypothetical advantage. It is impossible to appreciate the amount involved, because the President of the Board of Education has been unable to give us an accurate forecast of the cost. It should be made quite clear that we are not in any way assisting education by this Resolution, but that we are providing an additional loan to parents of children; a bribe to get them to accept the Bill. So far from assisting employment, we are deliberately going to make it more difficult for our people to get back into employment.
§ Mr. CAMPBELLDuring the Committee stage of this Resolution I made some observations to which the President of the Board of Education did not refer in his reply, and I feel it my duty, in view of the fact that I am very perturbed about this Bill, to raise these questions again. I said that I disapproved of the Bill, because I thought that the country was already sufficiently taxed and that we could not afford any further expenditure. I want to emphasise that point this evening, and I have some evidence to put before him. I said during the Committee stage that, from a business point of view, it was necessary to inquire closely into the amount of money that was really required. It is easy to vote millions of pounds, but when they have to be turned into taxes it is necessary to consider the matter closer, so that we may know exactly what we are doing.
§ Mr. SANDHAMWe are removing a tariff from the children's prospects.
§ Mr. CAMPBELLTake the question of the accommodation. There will be a shortage of accommodation—
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat question does not arise on this Financial Resolution.
§ Mr. CAMPBELLWhen I raised this matter the other day, I pointed out that it was useless to vote this maintenance grant unless the accommodation in the schools was available, and I hope, Mr. Speaker, you will realise that the maintenance grant is useless—
§ Mr. SPEAKERI realise that this Money Resolution deals with maintenance alone.
§ Mr. CAMPBELLIf I cannot go into particulars I should like to deal in general terms with the question of maintenance. We are asked to vote many millions of money for the maintenance of children in schools, but I say in general terms that that money will be voted for nothing if there is not sufficient accommodation, if there are not sufficient teachers and if the organisation of the schools is such that the education for which the maintenance is required cannot be carried on. The whole scheme cannot possibly come into being for several years at least. I object in principle to extra taxation which affects not only the so-called rich, but everyone in the country. It is owing to extra taxation that there is so much unemployment to-day. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to let us know exactly what position we shall be in on 1st April, 1931. [HON. MEMBERS: "We know!"] I shall be surprised if hon. Members have as much reason to laugh then as now. They will not be sitting where they are to-day, and I suggest that a great number of them will not be sitting in the House at all.
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Morgan Jones)In the main, the discussion has been limited to one simple point, and, if I do not, therefore, refer to the points raised by the hon. Member who has just spoken, I hope he will appreciate that we propose to discuss his points at greater length on a later occasion. The simple point raised is the question of the cost of this piece of legislation. The hon. Member who has just spoken invited us to come to closer grips with the figures that are involved. I am bound to confess that, having heard the varying estimates by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, I am inclined heartily to endorse his appeal, for what has happened in regard to this particular piece of legislation is very interesting. On the day, for instance, that the White Paper which accompanied the publication of the Bill appeared, I noticed that one newspaper in London, in its lunch edition, announced that the cost of the Bill would be £6,250,000. Two hours later, after lunch, that figure had mounted to £8,000,000. Figures, I believe, have a habit of expanding after lunch.
2018 In this House itself this week we have had various estimates. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir H. Young) used the figure of £9,000,000; the right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) used the figure of £9,000,000; the noble Lady the Member for Kinross Western (Duchess of Atholl) was not to be beaten in this Dutch auction and made it £12,500,000; and the hon. and gallant Gentleman who initiated the debate tonight was not to be outdone and made it from £15,000,000 to £20,000,000. It ought to be enough for hon and right hon. Members opposite to read carefully the Financial Memorandum which accompanies the Bill. It is true that we cannot give precise and accurate figures, but nobody could. The Noble Lady opposite knows very well that if you are to anticipate the effect of legislation over a given number of years, you cannot give an exact estimate as to what it will cost. We have been told in the course of the discussion to-night that we ought not to entertain this proposal because the cost to the State will be so immense. I wonder when hon. Members opposite began to examine this question of expenditure on education. The Noble Lady spoke of £12,500,000 as the cost of these proposals.
§ Mr. JONESIn point of fact, that figure includes the cost of reorganisation, and the Noble Lady did not tell the Committee last Tuesday when she spoke that those figures include estimates presented by local education authorities in response to a Circular sent out by the President of the Board of Education in the late Government, and sent out in that most fatal month of May, in this case May, 1928. The hon. Members opposite must not attribute to this particular Bill this enormous cost of which they speak. They must remember that much of the money of which they are speaking relates to the problem of the reorganisation of the schools, which is a proposal that did not emanate from my right hon. Friend at all, but was initiated by his predecessor, the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy).
Hon. Members opposite are alarmed about expenditure, but their alarm comes 2019 somewhat late, for I have in my hand a copy of a pamphlet issued by the Conservative party in 1929, and in this pamphlet they were actually swaggering that they were spending more than the Socialists. Let me read the paragraph dealing with the finance of education:
In 1928–29 the Board of Education have approved the expenditure by local education authorities in England and Wales of £73,540,000, as compared with £68,943,000 in 1924–25.In other words, this is saying how much more prodigal they could be with the public money than the real Socialists. We are mere children at the job. When hon. Gentlemen opposite went to the electorate and held up this as their record and pointed out how lavish they could be in expenditure on education, they have no right to turn round and accuse us for bringing up the expenditure to the requisite amount. Our discussion has been limited to the single point of the cost. We can debate all the points in greater detail at a later stage, but tonight hon. Gentlemen will agree—
§ Captain WATERHOUSEIf I may interrupt, this is the proper stage for the discussion of finance. It is not fair to say we can go into it at much greater length on further occasions. This is the proper occasion.
§ Mr. JONESThat is perfectly true, but the details in regard to this problem can be gone into during the Committee stage. I think the House will agree that, having had this discussion on the Report stage of the Resolution, we might now come to the final decision.
Duchess of ATHOLLI do not wish to detain the House more than a minute or two, but the hon. Gentleman has rather misrepresented what I said the other day, unintentionally, I am sure. I feel bound to remind him that I made it quite clear that these estimates that I endeavoured to frame were for the total expenditure of local authorities on elementary and higher education. I pointed out that the Financial Memorandum included not a penny of estimates for reorganisation and that the President himself had said, in answer to a question I put to 2020 him, that it gave no estimate for the cost of reorganisation. I asked him what the cost would be, and he said he could not give it. I asked what was the total expenditure, as outlined in the programme, for local education authorities, and he gave certain figures for a certain proportion of the authorities. I endeavoured to add the remaining proportion, and, in the course of my speech, I clearly explained that that expenditure included all the proposed expenditure for local authorities on all forms of education. The figure I mentioned was given in an endeavour to get at the financial background against which this new proposal ought to be considered. I want emphatically to endorse the statement that any additional expenditure which was to be incurred while we were in office certainly did not include any payment to parents such as is now contemplated. While we held office we were able to reduce by two-thirds the number of classes of children above fifty. Look at the answers given by the right hon. Gentleman in reply to questions when he came into office. When we were in office we—
§ Mr. EDEIs it in order for the Noble Lady to give a disquisition of what happened under her Government?
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think the Noble Lady has been trying to associate the question of the increased expenditure on maintenance allowances with that of the existing education expenditure, but she must endeavour to confine herself more closely to the Financial Resolution that is before the House.
Duchess of ATHOLLI think I can put it in a nutshell. When we were in office our Estimates never reached the Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman opposite when he was President of the Board of Education in 1924, and—
§ Mr. SPEAKERNow the Noble Lady is talking about the general policy of education.
Duchess of ATHOLLI am sorry, but perhaps on another occasion I shall be able to put that point. May I, in conclusion, just reply to something that 2021 was said the other evening with regard to finance by the hon. Member for North Lanark (Miss Lee). The hon. Member, in reply to several hon. Members on this side—
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe Noble Lady must confine her remarks to the Resolution now before the House.
Duchess of ATHOLLThen I will deal with that also on another occasion. I will only repeat what was said the other day. I think these maintenance allowances introduce a new principle, the principle of giving allowances for children who are within the compulsory age of school attendance, and without any question of merit. As such, we consider that they introduce a now series of principles to which much more serious consideration should be given than has been the case so far. The Government in this matter are taking two steps at once, and in so doing they have outrun public opinion and outrun the economic capacity of these times. These allowances are a payment, for the first time, to parents for keeping the law of school attendance, and as such we consider that they embody a new and very undesirable principle, to which we strongly object.
§ Mr. WOMERSLEYThe hon. and gallant Member for South Leicester (Captain Waterhouse) put a question about these maintenance grants, as to where boys and girls attending secondary schools who now receive maintenance grants of a similar nature will be able to participate in these grants between the ages of 14 and 15. That was a fair question to put, and I should like to have an answer to it, if possible.
§ Mr. REMERI should not have intervened in this debate had it not been for the very strange view which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education took as to this Financial Resolution. I would point out to him that this is the last opportunity which we shall have of dealing with this all-important matter of the finance of this all-important Measure. I must say that I am very alarmed by the observations that have fallen from the hon. Member. We have criticised the 2022 alleged cost, which has been put from these benches, as he stated—and I accept his statement—at sums varying from £9,000,000 to £20,000,000, and he himself is not able to give us an indication as to what the cost will be. That is all the more reason why we should scrutinize his observations with the greatest care. If the hon. Member is not able to-night to give us the slightest indication as to what the precise cost will be, that is all the more reason why this debate should be continued. He has said that we, as the Conservative party, have been as guilty as the party opposite in expenditure on education, and —
§ Mr. SPEAKERWe are not now dealing with the whole cost of education, and the hon. Member must confine his remarks to the Resolution.
§ Mr. REMERI regret that I fell into the same mistake as the Parliamentary Secretary, and therefore I will not pursue that argument, except to say that, when it comes to expenditure on education or anything else, I stand for economy. In my election address I said I would take an independent view of a constructive character. [Laughter.] Hon. Members apparently do not see anything constructive in being economical, but that is not a new doctrine to me. In view of the damage to our trade which the expenditure of this Measure will cause, I must rise in protest., particularly in face of the fact that neither the hon. Gentleman nor anybody on the other side, has given any indication of the great expenditure which will be caused by it.
§ Mr. WOMERSLEYMay I not have a reply to my question? I think that the Minister is prepared to give one.
Question, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution," put, and agreed to.