HC Deb 27 April 1965 vol 711 cc329-39
Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I suggest that Amendments Nos. 29 and 31 can be taken together, if the House has no objection.

Mr. Wylie

Once again, I do not wish to move an Amendment if the hon. Lady will move the second Amendment, No. 31. It is almost identical with the terms of Amendment No. 29 and I am perfectly content that the Government Amendment should find its way into the Bill. Accordingly, I do not propose to move Amendment No. 29.

Mrs. Hart

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member. There is little between us on this matter. It is clearly a question of one point which his Amendment does not cover, but which ours would cover. We are agreed, as we were after consideration in Committee, that we are anxious to be quite certain that procedure——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

There is still Amendment No. 30 between Amendments 29 and 31.

Mrs. Hart

I beg to move, in page 17, line 36 to leave out "proceedings before the Committee" and to insert "the proceedings".

This is a purely drafting Amendment, a simple one which occurred to us as we went very carefully through the Bill. This is an improvement and cuts out two or three words. I think the House will find it acceptable.

Amendment agreed to.

Mrs. Hart

I beg to move in page 17, line 37, at the end to insert: (f) for securing that where evidence is tendered which would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings in Scotland it shall not be admitted by the Committee unless, after consultation with the assessor acting under paragraph 3 of this Schedule, the Committee is satisfied that its duties under this Act require that it should be admitted.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I was sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but an Amendment must be made at the place at which it occurs in the Bill. Otherwise, it cannot be made.

Mrs. Hart

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for interrupting me. I had omitted to notice Amendment No. 30.

There is nothing between us on the question of Amendment No. 31. We are all agreed, after consideration in Committee, that it is very important indeed that the rules governing procedure to be followed in proceedings before the Disciplinary Committee should have rules of evidence no less stringent than those applying in the courts. It was originally thought that the need to have the approval of the Lord President of the Court of Session for any rules made would be good enough, but it seems best to incorporate in the Bill itself an Amendment which brings in more precisely the requirement needed on the law of evidence. There is precedent for the original wording in the Bill in other legislation, but it is best to incorporate this quite clearly.

The Opposition Amendment, No. 29, had it been moved, would have had one effect which I am sure the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) will not mind my pointing out. Otherwise, I should have been happy to accept that Amendment The difficulty would have been that this very important provision on the rules of evidence should be part of the corpus of the rules and should not be a rather awkward interpolation or addendum to it.

Our Amendment incorporates the wording in the Bill at this point and makes it part of the corpus of the rules themselves. What we do here is to provide that any matter tendered as evidence in proceedings before the Disciplinary Committee shall, unless the assessor has been consulted and agrees, be as though it were in criminal proceedings in Scotland. In other words, nothing shall be admissible as evidence that would not be admissible in the Court of Session. I am glad that the hon. and learned Member for Pentlands appreciates the effort we have made to incorporate the point he made in Committee. The whole Committee was concerned that we should tighten this up as far as it could possibly be tightened up. The Amendment is designed to do that. I hope it is acceptable to the House.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. Clark Hutchison

I agree with the hon. Lady that the Amendment improves the Bill from what it was in Committee, but it is still not entirely satisfactory. Why cannot the ordinary rules of evidence apply in the Disciplinary Committee? What special cases are likely to arise for which different rules of evidence will be necessary? Is the hon. Lady sure that, if there are different rules, they will work fairly for the accused? I see no reason for making this proviso. It is no argument that such a procedure has been followed in previous Acts. The hon. Lady probably has in mind the one dealing with the medical profession which is an English Act. In any case, if something has been done wrongly before, there is no need to repeat it now.

Mrs. Hart

If the hon. Gentleman studies the proceedings in Standing Committee, he will find that I dealt with this point very fully. That is why the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) is satisfied to have this Amendment incorporated in the Bill without requiring any further Amendment. It is for this reason that we feel satisfied that the rules of evidence here, with the particular exceptions provided for, as I explained in Committee, are all that is required.

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not happy about it. Had he tabled a detailed Amendment of his own on this point, different from that tabled by the hon. and learned Gentleman in Committee, we would have been able to consider it in detail. I should be out of order if on the consideration of this Amendment I referred to something which does not specifically relate to the words we are now considering.

Mr. Wylie

Although I have accepted the Government Amendment, I should make it clear that I should have preferred Amendment No. 28. However, that was not selected. I myself believe that the ordinary rules of evidence should always be accepted in any proceedings of a judicial or quasi-judicial nature. It was only as a second choice, so to speak, that the alternative proposition has been put forward. However, since the primary Amendment was not selected, I am perfectly happy with the alternative.

Amendment agreed to.

8.49 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

The hon. Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) referred to the fact that I had not been able to participate in the proceedings of the Standing Committee. I thought that she might have been glad that I was not there. I can assure her that it was a matter of considerable regret to me that I was not able to be there. She will appreciate that, if I had been there, I would have been the Government's majority. That majority was liable to be expected to be elsewhere on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the Committee was meeting. If the noble Lady or her hon. Friends would make arrangements on important Bills to ensure that I could be there and could be away to meet my other commitments I should be delighted to be on some of these Committees. This is an approach which has already been made to us and, therefore, she had better be careful about it.

The Bill led to fairly lengthy proceedings in Standing Committee, and the Report stage has seen the development of some of the points made there. Therefore, the Bill, which was important to Scotland and which certainly captured the imagination and enthusiastic support of Scottish teachers, has had fairly extensive and exhaustive tests. I thought that the Bill when introduced was a good one but I am the first to admit that the Bill as we now have it is very much better. Credit for that goes to hon. Members who served on the Scottish Standing Committee and particularly to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, and those who have followed the Bill through Committee and to the Report stage. It is an indication of the interest which this subject has for Scottish Members that there has been such continuing interest in the Bill.

The Bill follows very largely the recommendations of the Wheatley Committee. Some fears were aroused about the points where we departed from those recommendations, but we have had opportunities for properly discussing those and putting forward justifications. Although we have not satisfied everyone, there has been a fairly ready acceptance that we were justified in departing where we did.

The Wheatley Committee devoted a great deal of thought to finding the right balance between professional and public interest in the matters of entry into the profession and the discipline of the profession and the rest. I think that what we now have in the Bill pretty well enshrines what the Wheatley Committee hoped it would become. The Teaching Council will not have unfettered scope in such matters as determining requirements for entry into the profession, but for the first time it will have a very large measure of responsibility, subject to the Secretary of State of the day and to Parliament. We believe that this is the right balance and that we have the right participation by the Secretary of State, authorised and watched by Parliament, in respect of how he accepts and carries out his responsibilities.

It is our intention within the framework of the Bill to ensure that the Council can act with an appropriate degree of independence and that we shall look upon it not merely as just another advisory committee. That would be hopelessly wrong. All our hopes would be dashed if that was what it turned out to be. Much depends on the acceptance by the Council of its responsibility, apart from the responsibility of its members as teachers, because in the ordinary course of its work we expect it to review the issues before it not in a narrow technical way but in the light of the requirements of the educational service in Scotland now and in the future. I am sure that hon. and right hon. Members opposite feel exactly the same way and that this is their hope also for the Council.

It was apparent in our earlier proceedings, and it was noticeable in the Second Reading days, that there were some fears that we would need to write into the Bill in Committee and on Report provisions to cover all sorts of events, which would really mean that the Council would have lost control of its senses and would be thinking only of teachers and not of the children and of education, and might well recommend or do something which would be unreasonable. By this time I believe that these fears have been cast aside. I hope that if we can secure the passing of the Bill by early summer we shall be able to take in hand fairly quickly the necessary steps for the constitution of the Council.

Obviously, the arrangements for the initial election of the teacher members will take some time, but we have some experience of this sort of thing in connection with the governing bodies of colleges of education, certain sections of which are presently elected by teachers. I expect that the Council should be able to take office early in 1966.

Its first task will be to consider in detail the practical arrangements for setting up the Register of Teachers and, thereafter, the process of registration will follow. In the meantime, the Council will need to consider what it should recommend to me for the regulations governing the education and training of teachers. I should expect that, in the first instance, the Council would recommend the adoption of the substance of the existing regulations so that we have a proper carry-over in a regular way. I refer to the consolidated Training Regulations which were made in January and came into force in early April. There will be something like a transitional period during which the new machinery is put together and brought into use. Once the Council is fully established, I shall surrender the powers which I now have under the 1962 Act to issue certificates of competency to teach. I sat on this bench earlier and really itched when hon. Members started talking about fitness to teach. After all, there is a celebrated authority in St. Andrews which issues what we call certificates of fitness. Nobody asks what the fitness is for. I assume that it means fitness to be educated at a university. I think that it is far better to leave the particular phrase in point as it is in the Bill.

Here, we have a Secretary of State surrendering some of his powers, and I hope that we shall have some plaudits for this. People have been telling Secretaries of State for a long time that they should surrender their powers. I can imagine some people getting up and saying. "This is one of the powers you should never have surrendered". We must look at the thing realistically. Whether or not it is wise to surrender powers in this connection can be judged by the degree of maturity and responsibility of the Scottish teachers, the professional organisations, the local authorities, and the others who will constitute this new body. I am confident that there is no teaching profession in any part of the world with more maturity, more real sense of vocation and more real desire to see progress in education in the broadest way than the Scottish teachers. It is because of that that the Bill is possible.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor (Glasgow, Cathcart)

I was interested in the point the right hon. Gentleman made about the powers which he is giving up. Does not he agree that one of the principal recommendations of the Wheatley Committee was contained in paragraph 103 of its Report, which suggested that the Secretary of State should not have the power to initiate regulations? That power has not been given up, and it appears to me that the present arrangements——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. We cannot now discuss what is not in the Bill. This is the Third Reading debate.

Mr. Taylor

I have no intention of——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman must listen. It is not in order on the Third Reading of the Bill to discuss matters which the hon. Gentleman, apparently, would have liked to be in the Bill but which are not in it. This is a matter of order.

Mr. Ross

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid point. It is a point which we discussed on Second Reading and, where we could, at other stages as well. With that point in mind, I referred to the feeling that we had got the right balance in the responsibilities which the Secretary of State must have, having regard to the public interest, and what we were able to give to the profession from the point of view of its interest. I think that we have pretty well achieved what is desired by agreement between both sides.

I was saying that, by next year, after the establishment of the Council, I shall be able to resign certain powers which I presently have for controlling entry into the profession. I shall do so gladly because, as I said, I consider that the teaching profession of Scotland is sufficiently mature and wise to be able to exercise these powers in the interests of education as a whole, not looking at matters from a purely sectional point of view.

We will also take in hand the necessary steps for winding up the present Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers and the reallocation of the functions now exercised by that Council. As recommended by the Wheatley Committee, some of those functions will go to the new Teaching Council and some to the proposed Joint Committee for the Colleges of Education, referred to in the Bill. There are a few of a wholly administrative kind which, again as recommended by the Wheatley Committee, in all probability will be taken over by my Department, particularly the payment of grants to students under the special recruitment scheme.

Many major problems face us in education. Not the least difficult are bound up with the recruitment and training of teachers. It would not be appropriate or in order for me now to attempt a review of the future in this regard. I am as likely to be called in order as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor). We can only speak of what is in the Bill. All our problems will not be solved by the establishment of the new Council, but I am convinced that it will bring about a new situation which will enable us to proceed in an effective way in co-operation with the teachers and the other educational bodies concerned, and that is a step forward.

This Bill was born in dispute. It may be, in respect of the teachers, that it was born in despair. It was born in a strike of teachers in Scotland, out of which came the Wheatley Committee, from whose Report we have the Bill. The education service depends on a partnership of teachers, education authorities and the Government, all working together in the interests of our children and young people. I like to think that the setting up of the Council is a development of the conception of partnership and one which will enable the teachers to play their part more effectively in the many tasks that lie ahead in Scottish education.

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Noble

Before we say farewell to the Bill it would be only right for me to pick up one or two points made by the right hon. Gentleman and to thank the Under-Secretary of State for the work she did in Committee and the way in which she accepted ideas which came largely from our side but were also supported on her side. As a result, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, we have a better Bill. Credit for the Bill must inevitably go, to some extent, as we said on Second Reading, to Lord Wheatley and his Committee and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the broad drafting, if not the detailed drafting, was carried out before he undertook the great office of Secretary of State.

The Bill, with any luck at all, should bring new hope to the teaching profession of Scotland, although I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that its effect will go almost directly in proportion to the way in which teachers look at their duties on the Council as individuals rather than as members of particular parts of the profession. A great many problems will have to be solved in the years to come and some will need new thinking and perhaps a removal of some of the restrictive practices, if one may use that phrase, which occasionally creep into even as intelligent a profession as teaching.

I welcome the Bill. I wish the Teaching Council the best of luck and success in its task. I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman is surrendering some of his powers to the Council. He is right to do so, if for no other reason than that we want to keep as many of our teachers as possible in the schools and not drive them into politics.

9.5 p.m.

Sir M. Galpern

I, too, welcome the Bill, which sets up for the first time in the world a Teaching Council responsible for the registration of teachers and, if necessary, dealing with them in a disciplinary fashion and for raising the whole status of the profession.

The general impression so far created in the profession and among the public is that the Bill does that and that alone. However, Clause 3 contains as important an aspect of the Council's work, for the Council is to be charged with the duty of doing something about the supply of teachers. The setting up of a register will become purely a formal matter once a registrar has been appointed and the general pattern of the work has been set out, but I hope that the duty laid on the Council in Clause 3 will become of paramount importance and a duty to which the Council will devote considerable attention.

We all know of the tremendous shortage of teachers in Scotland and elsewhere. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State are actively engaged in considering ways and means of stimulating the recruitment of teachers. There are many facets of this problem which seem almost insoluble. I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend is about to mount one of the most expensive propaganda campaigns to attract to the profession people who on second thoughts might like to become teachers.

However, I must express regret, as I did in Standing Committee, that in this work and in its recommendations about the supply of teachers the Council will not be able to consider remuneration or conditions of service. I hope that that will not prevent it from making recommendations about the value of grants to students in training. I would not regard such grants as being remuneration or conditions of service, and I hope that the Council will be able to use that as an instrument in its recommendations for stimulating the supply of teachers.

I hope that the Council will be able to make recommendations about the payment of full salaries in addition to pensions to those retired teachers who return to the profession. I draw the attention of the former Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), to the fact that one of our main sources of extra teachers at the moment is retired teachers who have returned to the profession and who are paid a proportion of salary together with pension. I hope that the Council will be able to recommend that those people, who are helping in the present very difficult situation, should receive full salary as well as pension.

I hope that in the campaign to attract or regain to the profession married women, the Council will be able to recommend special tax reliefs, which I would not regard as coming strictly within the realm of remuneration and conditions of service.

Unfortunately, we cannot ignore the fact that money is a very important factor in all schemes for attracting people to the teaching profession. Even though Clause 3 excludes from its consideration the amount of remuneration paid to the various chapters or categories of teachers, nevertheless it is allowed to make suggestions which might involve financial considerations which are not within the scope of remuneration.

It is in this respect that the Council can play a very important part. I hope that as soon as it is constituted it will get down to consideration of this important problem, because unless we have an experienced body, such as we will have in the Council, which devotes its time to this problem, I regret to say that it does not seem to me that we shall solve the pressing and urgent problem of teacher shortage in Scotland within the next 10 or 15 years.

9.11 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

I make no apology for returning to the narrow topic which I raised in Committee, namely, Scotland's failure to take adequate steps to recognise teaching qualifications outside her own boundaries. It is my hope that the Council will use its powers to give urgent attention to the question of recognition of those who were trained not in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but in Poland, or Belgium, or the United States, or England. If it does this, it will, in a sense, do something to wipe from our escutcheon something which is rather blatant.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.