HC Deb 20 November 1963 vol 684 cc984-5
35. Sir M. Galpern

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, in view of the Government's policy of pressing forward with measures to provide for a rising school population and to improve the standard of school education, he will authorise local authorities whose school building programmes were cut earlier this year to proceed with their lists of projects as originally submitted to him.

Mr. Noble

No, Sir. The programmes originally submitted by education authorities for the current year proposed collectively far more work than could have been undertaken, but the programmes I approved are permitting investment in school building to continue at a very high level.

Sir M. Galpern

How can the right hon. Gentleman's reply be reconciled with the reply he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) on 24th April when he indicated that if he

had enough money to enable every education department to start all the work it wanted to do immediately, this would be a different problem."—[Official Report, 24th April, 1963; Vol. 676, c. 208.] Is he aware that Glasgow and Edinburgh, and now Perth and Kinross, are protesting to the Scottish Education Department about the savage and shameless cuts in education expenditure?

Mr. Noble

It would certainly have made a difference because one or two local authorities—the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) knows one—could have spent more money. It is none the less true that very few additional projects that I am aware of could hive been started. In Glasgow, where we gave an allocation of £2,500,000, the authority had to make adjustments to keep abreast of this programme and, so far as I can discover at the moment, will achieve it only by March of next year.

Mr. Bence

In view of the promise we have had through the White Paper for the development of central Scotland and increasing investment in social amenities, will the right hon. Gentleman immediately issue an order that local authorities such as Dunbartonshire which have had their school building programmes cut—it would be an amenity for the population if the amounts cut were restored—should go ahead with the social investment of education for children?

Mr. Noble

What we are endeavouring to do is to see that any extra expenditure goes to areas where growth is expected, and there are some areas in Dunbartonshire which I hope will be helped.