Vote I. Pay, &c., of the Air Force (Hansard, 10 March 1959)

§ Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)
We are dealing in Vote 1 with the pay and allowances of 180,000 officers and men serving in the Royal Air Force. There is an increase of £7.29 million. I appreciate that this is due to the greater number of Regulars, and so on. One of the reasons given by the Government for the increase is the greater number of families abroad. If that be so, it behoves us to look very carefully at Subhead E, which deals with education allowances issued for the purpose of assisting officers, airmen and airwomen in the secondary, vocational and technical education of their children when the personnel are serving abroad". At first sight, the increase in relation to officers from £179,000 to £500,000, and in relation to airmen and airwomen from £31,000 to £90,000, looks fairly good. When we take into account the Minister's statement in the Estimates that there are a greater number of families abroad it does not look so good.
I am far from happy about the relationship of participation in education allowances as between airmen and officers. We managed to say a word or two on this matter when we were discussing the main Air Estimates on Thursday, 5th March. The aggregate amount estimated for airmen and airwomen would be very much greater than it is if we had solved the problem of meeting the educational needs of the children of airmen.
The educational facilities available to the children of airmen should not be related to rank. They should be equal for officers and men. That is a principle to which we have attached considerable attention in the past in the part of Britain from which I come, where we have not a public school system such as there is south of the Border. The generally accepted principle in Scotland is that everybody goes to the nearest school, which means that the Scottish airman will 1194 be even more penalised than the English airman in this respect, being denied educational facilities such as he would get if he were not in the Services.
It is obvious that rank, and the pay attaching to it, decide whether the child will go to a particular type of school according to this system. I know that the Minister will say that exactly the same allowances are granted whether it be for an officer or airman; £150 is payable if the child is going to a boarding school at home and the family is abroad and that allowance of £150 is available for the airman as well as for the officer. It is obvious that the amount of pay which airmen have as compared with officers will decide whether the men will avail themselves of the educational facilities given. It means that if we want equality of opportunity, £150 may be enough for an officer, but not enough for an airman.
We can see from the Estimate what is happening. The children of the officers are being sent home to boarding-schools, while the children of the airmen are being educated either locally, or at home under the care of grandparents or guardians. We should look at this again. The Grigg Committee made various suggestions on education, but I do not think that it paid sufficient attention to the problem as it affects other ranks. It suggested the provision of secondary education "at selected places overseas." That is something that we must take into account if more families are being sent overseas. Is anything to be done about that?
The Grigg Committee also suggested that as well as increases in the allowances —and we welcome that provision, although not as it has worked out—arrangements should be made for …the provision of special boarding facilities in connection with schools in the United Kingdom. The idea was that certain local authorities should establish, near the schools, hostels of which the children of Service men should avail themselves.
That has already been done in connection with secondary education in certain parts of the country where there is a scattered population. It applies equally to Scotland as to England. The children live in the hostel accommodation and get their education in a centrally-sited 1195 secondary school. There is no reason why this should not be looked at again. We might be able to link it up with the Royal Air Force itself if, somewhere within the new married accommodation, a hostel were established where service people could keep their eye on these Service children. I think that that is worth consideration.
Another point worries me. If the husband is serving, and his family is with him in a not very delectable spot overseas, there must be a tremendous temptation for the parents to try to scrape enough together to send the child to boarding school. Here let us be frank. Not all boarding schools are good boarding schools. Is any advice as to the quality of the boarding school given, or available to those anxious to take advantage of this scheme?
This question cropped up over the education allowances paid by the Ministry of Pensions when I was a member of the Ministry of Pensions Advisory Council. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) will bear me out when I say that we got the impression that money was being wasted through children being sent to boarding schools that did not provide the desired education. Now that we are again looking at this question of education with some urgency we might reconsider this aspect, and see whether guidance cannot be given in respect of those facilities.
A query I have on Subhead H is, I confess, purely a matter of curiosity—though not exactly idle curiosity. Under Subhead H.2 there appears a sum of £282,000 for "Other Allowances." The Explanatory Notes say that these include "Entertainment Allowance"; and that This allowance is issued at varying rates to officers holding certain appointments to enable them to meet the cost of the necessary official entertainment attaching to the appointments I wonder whether we could have a little more information about this because, as the Under-Secretary will know, it is not the only item for official entertainment covered in the Estimates. Who are these officers? What are their particular appointments, and what is the definition of "necessary official entertainment" which is to cost the country about £282,000?

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Airey Neave)
On this Vote the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) has asked a number of questions about educational allowances, as he did in the previous debate on 5th March. He implied that in some way or another we were planning to provide for the children of officers on a different basis than for the children of airmen. I think I explained in the previous debate that that is not so. The choice of the parents is unfettered. To officers and airmen alike precisely the same opportunities and benefits are available. I seek now to explain that.
I said in the former debate that the figures we had in the Estimates represented the extent to which officers and airmen are expected to take advantage of the new rates. There is no fixed ceiling, but, if more officers or men than we expect accept the allowance, the expenditure will have to go up. Officers and men have the same allowance under the same conditions and the rates, including those for the privately boarded child, are those recommended by the Grigg Committee. There is no question of distinguishing between officers and airmen in this allowance. Serving men in comparable stations would be eligible for the same allowances and, now the allowances are available for technical and vocational training, I hope that more airmen will take advantage of them.
The hon. Member made other points of which I shall certainly take note. He mentioned the provision of hostels near schools. The position at the moment is that the Minister of Education has been, and still is, considering in conjunction with certain local authorities the question of the provision of extra boarding accommodation for children of Service parents and we hope that soon proposals might be forthcoming. The hon. Member made a point about the education of children abroad which I thought important. Strictly speaking, those amounts arise on other Votes, but the provision for the education of children in stations abroad is in fact rising substantially. The hon. Member will find that under Subhead C of Vote 9.

§ Mr. Ross
I think the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the point I was trying to make about educational allowances. It is all very well saying that officers 1197 and men get the same allowance and so the opportunities are equal. That is like saying that everyone can dine at the Ritz; it is open to everyone provided he has the money. The addition of £100 to the salary of someone in a senior rank is entirely different in consequence from the addition of £150 to someone with the rank of corporal. It is when we make the addition sum that we get the result which enables us to work out whether or not there is equality of opportunity. Let us face it; there just is not. The figures demonstrate that.
I wonder if the Under-Secretary—if not now, perhaps at a later date—could give the number of airmen actually participating in the boarding school facilities of £150. I should think it is a very small number indeed.

§ Mr. Neave
I know the interest of the hon. Member in this point, and I certainly undertake to give him the information.