§ Miss HerbisonI beg to ask leave to present a Petition on behalf of my constituents in the village of Moodiesburn, Lanarkshire.
My constituents in Moodiesburn are seriously perturbed at the lack of adequate school accommodation for their children. This is a new housing area with a little over 900 houses. The people have been brought in from surrounding villages where the county council found it impossible to build houses because of the mineral situation. These people have not only had to leave their own villages but they now find that the education of their children is in serious jeopardy. This has been caused by lack of adequate financial assistance in the general grant for the building of schools.
Lanarkshire Education Authority, in accordance with a circular from the Scottish Education Department, worked out a programme which would cost £16 million. It now finds that under general grant it will receive less than £7 million. Representations have been made to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, but no relief is being given and schools which were to have been built in Moodiesburn are no longer to be built. It is for that reason that out of this community of 900 houses, 1,366 of my constituents have signed this Petition. The Petition concludes:
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that immediate steps be taken to make it possible for Lanarkshire Education Authority to provide this school.And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
§ To lie upon the Table.