HL Deb 11 March 1941 vol 118 cc609-28

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON)

My Lords, Parliament has already made special provision for the financial difficulties arising out of the war of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the colleges there, and has also passed an Act for dealing with financial difficulties which might arise in connection with the other universities of the country, called the Chartered and Other Bodies (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1939. But I now have to ask your Lordships' attention to the special difficulties connected with the war which are bound to arise in connection with some of the schools of the country. If your Lordships will be good enough to look at Clause I of the Bill you will see that three kinds of schools are dealt with. There is first of all "any school to which the Public Schools Acts, 1868 to 1873, apply" that refers to the seven schools, Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Rugby and Charterhouse. Secondly, the Bill deals with "any school administered by a body incorporated by Royal Charter," and, as the House knows, there are a great number of such schools, large and small, in various parts of the country, many of them with a great name and reputation—girls' schools as well as boys' schools. Thirdly comes yet another class of school, the schools which have an endowed and charitable trust foundation, in which the Board of Education is principally concerned, described in subsection (2) of Clause 1.

What is the nature of the difficulty which must be expected in the case of many of these schools, and which indeed has already presented itself in very acute form in some cases? Their difficulty is this, that owing to the circumstances of the war their finance is gravely interfered with, at any rate at two points. First of all, the income of such schools may in many cases be most seriously affected by war conditions. In some cases the number of pupils going there has been much diminished. The ordinary income of such a school, if it relies upon house property in some parts of the country, may have been destroyed owing to suffering bombardment. Therefore, on the one hand, such schools are liable to be losing a very substantial part of their normal income. On the other hand, the expenses of such schools in some respects may have been very considerably increased by the conditions of the war. Certainly, the prices of things are not less than they were. If it happens that the school has itself been a victim of bombardment or the like, it has an immediate need to meet the necessary outlay, and in some cases has the very greatest difficulty in finding how to do it. I have been myself communicated with by governors of some of these schools pointing out the character of the difficulties they have to face.

Consequently this Bill provides, very much in the same way as was provided by the earlier Bills to which I have referred, that the appropriate method may be employed to help them in the matter of finance. In the case of the great public schools or schools incorporated by Royal Charter, the appropriate machinery is that of an Order in Council. It can be made only on the application of the governors of the school. If the governors do not apply, or are not in favour of it, nothing can happen; and, as your Lordships will see, this Order in Council, on the application of the governing body, may make such provision as appears to His Majesty necessary or expedient for the purposes of securing economy or efficiency in the carrying on of the work of the school under war conditions. On the other hand, if we turn to the third category of schools—schools which are endowed or have charitable trust foundations—then the appropriate instrument is that of a scheme drawn up by the Board of Education, for, as your Lordships are aware, the Board of Education has succeeded to the old jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners in respect of educational trusts.

I would direct special attention to subsection (3) of Clause I, which says: Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing provisions of this section, any Order in Council or order made thereunder"—— that is to say, by the Board of Education— with respect to any school may in particular provide for enabling the governing body of the school to do a number of things which are labelled (a), (b), (c), and (d). I shall read them, if I may. The language is brief, and it may be more convenient to some of your Lordships. The first of the four main purposes is to apply, during the war period, the income or capital of any endowment of the school for purposes other than those for which, apart from the provisions of the order, such income or capital might be applied. Your Lordships will notice the phrase "income or capital." The question has been publicly raised as to the inclusion of the word "capital" in that subsection. I shall invite your Lordships to maintain the provisions of the Bill in that respect.

The second of the four purposes is to suspend or reduce, during the war period, any payments required to be made into any sinking fund established in connection with the administration of the finances of the school, and to extend the period during which any such payments are to be made. The third purpose is to vary, so far as it relates to the war period, any provisions relating to the election or retirement of members of the governing body or to the meetings of that body. And the fourth purpose is to delegate the exercise during the war period of any of the functions of the governing body to such person as may be provided for by and under the order. I do not entertain any doubt that this House will be generally sympathetic to the main purpose of this Bill and, indeed I do not think there is likely to be any serious question which will be discussed under the Bill other than that which may arise under the reference to "income or capital" in the first of these four paragraphs.

Therefore I address myself at once to that point, not with any idea that the House will at this stage wish to decide it, but because I wish to provide for those who are interested a short account of the considerations which, in the submission of the Government, make it necessary to include a reference to capital as well as a reference to income. First take trust income. It is very much better and simpler to take instances which are actual instances, though of course without mentioning the name of the school. There are many cases in which a school has a trust income which constitutes a special fund for awarding exhibitions or scholarships from the school to the universities. Under war conditions it is the actual experience of some of these schools that they cannot well use the full facilities thus provided because, as matters now stand, not only do the numbers of boys in the schools tend to be smaller, but when a boy gets to the age when he would be otherwise going to the university, it is extremely likely that, instead of doing so, he will at once enter on one form or other of preparation for the Fighting Services. Consequently, though the school may be oppressed in other respects financially, there lies there an income which is not, for the moment at any rate, being fully used.

Take another instance which happens in quite a large number of cases. In some schools there is a trust income which has to be applied, according to the terms of the trust, exclusively to assist foundation scholars; but when the needs of these scholars have been met there are cases in which there is a surplus which might very properly be used, one would think, during war-time, to help needy commoners to whose parents it may be of the greatest importance to get a measure of assistance. Yet that cannot be done if the strict terms of the trust are complied with. Or, again, there are many cases in which certain scholarships or exhibition funds are available, according to the terms of the trust, only to boys or girls coming from a very limited specified area, and there are instances now arising in which there are not enough boys and girls from that area to employ that income, so that the income has accumulated and is lying idle. I cannot doubt that in cases such as I have illustrated the House will see the reason of making provisions, carefully guarded provisions, which will require the sanction of various authorities, as I will point out later, but provisions which, under proper safeguards, may, at least to a modified degree, make use of this trust income in war-time in a way not strictly authorised by the narrow terms of the trust.

I observe that my noble friend Lord Quickswood, in a letter which most of us will have read in The Times, called attention to the power which this Bill confers as to modifying the use of trust capital. Let me give an instance of the kind of thing which at any rate is in the minds of the promoters of the Bill. You have a scheme—I know of one in connection with a public school—by which a fund has been established and has been gradually accumulating with a view to improving buildings largely out of the contributions of the old boys, for example building a chapel. Supposing that the Germans dropped a bomb on the existing chapel and smashed it up. It is not a very unreasonable proposition to say that under war conditions, and with the safeguards I have mentioned, it might be convenient and desirable to devote the fund that has been collected, at any rate for the time being, for the purpose of reconstituting the existing chapel of the school. After all, the first thing a school has to do is to carry on as a school, and no amount of far-sighted provision under the strict tenor of the rules which rightly govern these things in time; of peace will enable the school to enjoy the benefit of this far-sighted provision later on if this school is not assisted to carry on now.

In the same way the income of the scholarship fund may have accumulated owing to difficulties in making awards and may have been invested. I will not discuss whether, when that accumulation has been made, it ought to be regarded as capita' or income, but suppose it be regarded as capital it may, I submit, be desirable to authorise the temporary borrowing from that fund, in exceptional circumstances, perhaps even to authorise the alienation of the capital. Sometimes capital sums arc held for specific purposes which it may not be possible to use, and they might be loaned to a school or be used as collateral security for a loan. It is no good schools at this time of day seeking to raise a large loan; indeed we should discourage such a thing on grounds of public policy. I will only add that the Board of Education already has, under sections of the Charitable Trust Acts of 1853 and 1860, a very wide power to authorise the application of moneys for a variety of purposes which are not the strict purposes of the trust.

Now, if your Lordships will turn back to the Bill, you will see how it is proposed to safeguard this matter. It will be necessary, as set out in subsection (3) of Clause I, in the case of any Order in Council—and I have already pointed out that no Order in Council for this purpose can be authorised unless the governors of the school ask for it and approve of it—that the Order in Council should get the consent of the Lord President of the Council. The Lord President of the Council is traditionally the Minister who is the special guardian of these matters which come formally before the King in the form of an Order in Council, and there is no doubt, I think, that his is the proper authority whose assent is required. In the case of an order regarding the class of school which I have mentioned nothing would be done without the consent of the Board of Education. In subsection (4) it is provided that before any such order is made affecting property held in trust by trustees other than the governing body, the governing body shall consult those trustees; and any representations made by those trustees shall be submitted together with the application.

My submission is that if we take these provisions as a whole they are wise provisions. A tremendous responsibility rests on the shoulders of Parliament to see to it, in spite of the difficult times through which we are passing, that these institutions for the protection of our youth are not unnecessarily hampered in doing work which is essential for the future of the nation, and I should hope that the House will give sufficient confidence to the Lord President of the Council or to the Board of Education, as the case may be. We need not imagine that any fantastic or ridiculous or absurd use will be made of these powers. They will, of course, be strictly addressed to the necessities of the case—the necessities' of the cases that are urgent—and I invite your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Addison has asked me to express our views with regard to this Bill. I want to say at once that we offer no opposition to it. At the same time, it does raise certain matters, one of which has already been referred to by the noble and learned Viscount and has been the subject of correspondence in The Times, not only from the noble Lord, Lord Quickswood, who, I am sure, all his former colleagues in another place and your Lordships generally will welcome here, but also from other persons interested, and this correspondence continues to the present day. It touches on a matter which also was referred to by the Lord Chancellor. If I understood the Lord Chancellor correctly, he said that the governors might not wish to act in this matter.

I do not want to intervene in this dispute at all, but I think it right to ask for some further explanation of paragraph (b) of subsection (7) at the top of page 3 on the printed Bill. If I may be allowed to read it, it says: the expression 'governing body' in relation to any school mentioned in subsection (1) of this section, means such body as His Majesty in Council determines to be the body charged with the government of the school … We accept the safeguards cited by the Lord Chancellor, and I am perfectly sure your Lordships will be satisfied on that point, but the Bill itself allows apparently any responsible body to be nominated as a governing body. Does that mean the governors of the school as hitherto understood or accepted can be overruled?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I am sure that that is not the intention. I will make an inquiry, but I am satisfied from inspecting the definition that it is intended to cover the case where there may not be a governing body sufficiently identified. There is no intention of overruling the governing body at all.

LORD STRABOLGI

I am much obliged, but I think when the Lord Chancellor looks at the Official Report tomorrow he will see himself there is rather good ground for the inquiry I made owing to his use of the words "in certain cases the governors might not be prepared to act." I dare say there is a further explanation, and I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will give it in due course. There is quite a small matter in paragraph (c) of Clause I (3). There the war period is stated to begin on September 2. I may be wrong, but I had always understood that in other cases the date has been given as September 3. There may be a special reason in this case and I imagine it can be easily put right if it is wrong at a later stage.

The reasons for the Bill were very fully and lucidly explained by the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, but there is a difficulty which he did not mention which I think is worth referring to, and that is that certain of the great public schools have been compelled to evacuate into distant parts of the country. I myself, in the West Country, have had evidence of the tremendous difficulty they have met in housing their boys, in some cases in empty manor houses, some of which were half in ruins. There has been a general upheaval which has cost a great deal of money, but I am glad to say it has not really affected the efficiency of the schools concerned. The schools have carried on and will be none the worse, but perhaps better, for the experience.

Now, I think it my duty on behalf of the Party for whom I speak to say a word about the future. The noble and learned Viscount spoke of present difficulties, which we all understand, but I believe it will be found that the future may also be difficult for many of these schools. After the last war the public schools and proprietary schools generally—of course the proprietary schools are outside the ambit of this Bill—enjoyed what may be described as a boom. A great many people made fortunes in the last war and, quite understandably and creditably, they wanted their children to have the best education. The pressure on the public schools was so great in fact that Stowe was founded—and has been a marvellous success, thanks to brilliant leadership—to relieve some of the pressure on the older public schools. After this war the Situation will be very different. From such evidence as I have many of these schools will expedience a lean period. This Bill enables them to live on capital—subject to various safeguards, of course—in order to carry on for the time being. But when their immediately realizable capital is used up, if they are still in difficulties, what then? I want to make it perfectly clear that the Party for whom I am speaking only wishes well of the British public school system. We do not subscribe to the jokes about the old school tie. We judge by results, and the great public schools of this country have helped to make this nation and Empire what it is—and we have not done too badly.

The seven special cases which come under Clause I (I) (a), the older public schools, have provided many brilliant leaders for my Party. I myself went to the best public school in the world and I sent my sons to the second best—they could not go to the best because the old "Britannia," the training ship run on public school lines, with the advantage of naval discipline, had gone. Nevertheless, we have the stream of public opinion to consider, and let me say at once that while recognising that much has been good in what we call the public school system—which good we wish to preserve-—we have to remember at the same time that those who went to these schools received certain advantages of education. It looks very much as if many of the social customs of pre-war days will not continue in the future. We are in sight, I believe, of a society in which there will be fewer class differences in the future. One of the class differences in the past—again I repeat that we are not criticising but only recognising their existence—has been an educational one. As we believe—and I believe most of your Lordships believe—in equality of opportunity for everyone, that equality must be extended to educational facilities.

We have here a large problem which is strictly relevant to this Bill and I hope my right honourable friend Mr. Arthur Greenwood, who is planning for the future of Britain, will turn his fertile mind, when he has time, to the problem of the future of the public schools, because that will have a tremendous effect on the generations which will have to be educated after the war. If certain of these institutions are to starve financially because of those social changes, brought about through the wastage and impoverishment occasioned by the war, my friends consider it the duty of the State to rescue what is best in them and to maintain them as training centres for the youth of the future, who will be needed to rehabilitate this country. We have no opposition to offer the Bill itself which we recognise as a temporary measure.

THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH

My Lords, I confess I view this Bill with a good deal of misgiving. I speak as one intimately associated with more than one of the great public schools and as one who is a governor of schools for girls and boys. I consider that those who really stand behind this Bill ought to be congratulated on having enlisted the services of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. When I first heard that he was going to introduce the Bill, I felt that in most cases I should be ready to follow blindly the Lord Chancellor, but when I discovered that he was the spokesman of others some of my earlier loyalty seemed to be reduced. Certainly the noble and learned Viscount in his speech put the Bill before us in a most attractive way and with many of the things he said I certainly would agree to a large extent. He chose his illustrations admirably and put the points in favour of the Bill with very great skill. When, however, he said that he would "inquire" with reference to a point raised by the noble Lord who has just sat down, I thought that his use of the word "inquire" showed that he was not really the author of the Bill and that he was speaking on behalf of others. Who are those others? I gather that they are a provisional committee who are to carry on such necessary work as comes within their ambit until there is formally constituted a joint committee of headmasters and governing bodies. I said to myself, is not this a very large step for a provisional committee to take, when one would have thought that all they had to do was to watch things and communicate with governors and headmasters and others interested if anything arose on the horizon which seemed worthy of attention?

Here we have a fully fledged Bill put before us by this provisional committee. My own view would have been that it would have been wiser that the Bill should not have come before your Lordships' House until it had the backing of a real committee of governors and headmasters, unless indeed it is discovered that the provisional committee have made it unnecessary to set up such a body because all the work has been done beforehand by the provisional committee.

Now it is said to be only permissive. The Government say that those who want to can make applications and ask for permission to deal with the school conditions in this way or that way, and it is only to those that the Bill will refer. I cannot believe that that is really a full statement of what happens. My theory is that some may perhaps act hastily, and that such permission asked for by one set of school authorities may, in effect, lead to some pressure being put upon others' to do what they would not perhaps wish to do if the whole ground had been left clear for them.

And when you read that it is only for the duration of the war you can see that there might be a great tendency for things that are arranged for provisional use to get a permanent character. I do not feel too sure about the idea that it is only for the duration of the war. Do we really know enough about the future of the schools, about those who want to come to them, those who in the future will be able to come to them and those who will be induced by some rearrangement of the funds of the schools to come to them? My humble judgment is that those cases which the noble Viscount illustrated of using money collected for new charities for repairing might be put into a very much simpler Bill without leaving so many avenues open in other directions. Of course there are things quite obviously useful in the Bill and the Lord Chancellor mentioned them. It is desirable that if there are existing powers now in the hands of the Charity Commissioners and the educational authorities which can only be used in a rather complicated way, that procedure should be simplified. When one comes to the question of governors delegating the functions of a governing body to some other persons, one realises of course that many of the governors may be abroad or on service with the Forces and that such a provision is very desirable. Also, there is a regulation, I believe, about the number of meetings that may be held. These appear to me to be comparatively small matters. But I think it would have been wiser to wait until the public school authorities, the combined body of governors and headmasters, should have been able to put a thoughtful Bill into our hands.

I do not think we can know enough about the future, about what the state of the educational world will be at the end of the war. All our plans for the end of the war are at present in the nature of guess work and in regard to this war-time legislation we are making a mistake, in my judgment, if we desire that it should relate to great and established systems that are a part of our English life. I think we want to see that the war provisions do really relate to conditions that have arisen from the war, such as the Lord Chancellor indicated. But I also think, with regard to this larger legislation, that there are not enough of us able to be present at these times, to deal with such large and comprehensive matters as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has just indicated. The House has always desired to have a good attendance at its important meetings, and those here are not able to get down to the bottom of the thing and to give full and thoughtful consideration to such an important matter as it really deserves. There are so many people in war-time who are not able to think things out for themselves, perhaps because they have not the time, and are inclined to take up an easy-going attitude, saying: '' There are others who care strongly about the matter. I think the best thing we can do is not to interfere with them."

In this Bill, as it stands before us, there is no limit, that I can see, to the way in which these diverted funds may be used and I think that the words of the noble Lord who last spoke justify my misgivings. For example, I suppose if governors were in favour of it, funds might be used to subsidise pupils of very small means, and open the doors of the schools very widely. But so large and revolutionary a change ought to be made by a definite Act and not to be left possible under a Bill which in its essence has a much more limited purview. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, opened a wider vista. I do not think this is the right way to go to work. We ought to have something more authoritative behind us. This is a very large question indeed, and I do not think it is one that ought to be settled in this way in a Bill which professes to be a comparatively harmless little measure concerning wartime difficulties. We might find that some governing body would ask for a scheme that would allow it to use its funds for dealing with cases that are really not contemplated in the Bill as it stands, and for dealing with the improvement of the educational facilities of those who are not in the general purview of the Bill. If we are to have a revolution in our education, I think that it certainly ought to be done with an important Bill, not leaving it to one governing body or another to make such proposals, but saying "We have got to make a start here. We are not in a position to do more at this time."

I would like to think that this Bill came before us with greater authority than it does. I think we ought to agree that, until the time when all governors and all headmasters have had an opportunity of expressing their views, we should limit the possible operation of the Bill to ways that are now properly open to us. I hope that no one will suppose that I feel that there is no fault to be found with our present system of education. Far from it. I think that there is a great deal to be done, but I do not think that this is the right way to deal with this subject. It ought to be dealt with by a more comprehensive Bill, and the Bill which is out into our bands ought to have behind it the full authority of those who are responsible for the management of our great public schools.

LORD QUICKSWOOD

My Lords, if I venture to intrude myself upon the attention of your Lordships it shall be only for a very few minutes. I speak as one who in the main supports this Bill. I believe that a great many of its provisions will work advantageously to the public schools, and (specially to those poorer public schools which are, as the noble and learned Lord Chancellor has very lucidly explained to us, in difficulties, or at any rate threatened with difficulties, at the present time. I cannot say, however, that I like what may be called the atmosphere of the Bill. It reeks of dictatorship. The Board of Education, the President of the Council and the Secretary for Scotland can do exactly what they like, if the governing bodies once set them in motion. The language of the Bill allows the Board of Education, for example, to make "such provision as appears to the Board to be necessary or expedient," and that refers to a previous subsection for "securing economy or efficiency in the carrying on of the work of the school."

That might really allow anything in the world. Let me give a quite pleasant illustration. Suppose that the governing body of Eton thought that the Provost would conduct his duties with more dignity if he had a new and better suit of clothes. There is nothing in the world to prevent them going to the Privy Council and procuring an Order in Council, approved by the President of the Council, for spending the money devoted usually to the Newcastle Scholarship in providing the Provost with such a suit of clothes. It may be said that they are not very likely to do that. Perhaps not; at any rate if it were confined to the Provost that would be so; but if it were extended to all the Fellows, one hardly knows whether their virtue would be proof against such a temptation! But, however absurd an illustration you take, there is no limit to the powers that are given.

I greatly regret that the Bill was not confined to the four provisions which the noble and learned Lord Chancellor read to the House, and that this very general provision with which the Bill begins was not left out. But we live in an age which welcomes dictatorship, and we must, I think, think with respect henceforth of the President of the Board of Education as Der Führer, of the President of the Council as Il Duce, and of the Secretary for Scotland as El Caudillo. In that way we may bring them into line with their own legislation and accustom our minds to an age which is obviously going to be, before all other things, authoritarian.

Although I dislike the atmosphere of the Bill, I do not complain of what it does so far as it is strictly confined to the war period. By all means take what temporarily available funds there are from the income of the school to carry it over the difficulties, also temporary, of the war period. The danger is surely very great, however, that a governing body pressed hard by financial difficulties may lay hands on the capital (which does not, in any moral sense, belong to them) and use it in the hope that perhaps something may turn up if they can only get round a few months of financial embarrassment. That is what happens, to private individuals, and always disastrously; they take money which they had better not take in the hope that presently they will be all right again and perhaps able to repay it. The event almost invariably disappoints them; and, not having an Act of Parliament ready, as the governing bodies will have, they go to prison for embezzlement.

How foolish it is, then, to put this temptation in the way of governing bodies in financial difficulty, who may imperil the subsequent career of the school by destroying the capital or the interest on which a good deal of the efficiency of the school depends. You may have all the money now devoted to scholarships or to other means of promoting education consumed in the course of the war, and the school, left to scrape along as best it can after the war, probably collapsing all the same, because if it is in such difficulties as to tempt it to these courses it is not at all likely to survive in what may easily be the more difficult conditions after the war. The wise policy is surely to confine yourself entirely to the war period, to take the funds that arise during the war period and make those available for the special exigencies which also arise during the war period, but to go back on the day that the war period ends to the position that you were in before the war began, and leave the school in full possession of what the piety and educational zeal of pious founders in the past have made available for the advantage of education.

I do not follow the noble Lord opposite in his interesting little excursus into what may happen after the war. We do not in the least know what will happen after the war. It is possible that there may be a time of great financial embarrassment and narrowness, not only for those who are now well-to-do but also for the whole community. That, however, has never happened in the past. Every war in history, I think we may say, has been marked by the pessimistic expectation that after it the country will be ruined; but in fact the country has always been richer after such wars than it was before. I doubt, therefore, whether the community as a whole will be at all poorer two or three years after the war is over; but no one can tell, and it is certainly likely that those who at present have wealth will be very much poorer than they are now.

It is better, however, to leave these problems until we know the facts, and above all it is best to try to avoid in time of war launching out on changes which raise problems which we have neither the attention nor, I think, really the sanity to solve amidst the distresses of war. I read sometimes in the verdicts given by coroners' juries in cases of suicide that the act has been committed "under the temporary loss of balance of mind." Well, in war-time we are all suffering from a temporary loss of balance of mind; and we ought, therefore, strictly to avoid doing anything which will permanently change the future of our country or, in respect of these schools, which will permanently affect the life of the public schools. We should cultivate a devotion to the memory of Mary Lamb, who, being herself subject to attacks of lunacy, always put herself under restraint when she saw the premonitory symptoms of the attack beginning. We should put ourselves under restraint, the Houses of Parliament should in their legislative activities be under restraint to prevent them from committing the country in a moment of unbalanced folly to what in the years of peace no one would listen.

Let us, then, postpone all questions of the ultimate fate and utility of public schools. We may perhaps remind ourselves that they are grossly misnamed, and that they are in fact private institutions, fulfilling, like other private institutions, the function of providing what some people want to have, and that one might as well speak of working all the tailors' shops in London into a national system of tailoring as speak of forcing the public schools into a national system of education. They are private institutions, depending on their market, like other private institutions, and obliged therefore to accommodate themselves to that market. But let us leave the future of public schools to the future and let us in respect to this particular Bill not take away from the public schools of the future, in a moment of financial improvidence and difficulty, those resources which the piety of past ages has provided for them, but leave the capital and property of the schools untouched, while we use freely the income which arises from day to day.

VISCOUNT MERSEY

My Lords, I feel that a word ought to be said from these Benches in support of the Bill, and the fact that it falls to me to say it puts me in the invidious position of being so bold as to congratulate the noble Lord, and, if I may also do so, your Lordships' House, on the pleasure that we have all experienced this afternoon in listening to him for the first time in this House. I confess, however, that I never thought in my younger days that it would fall to my lot to congratulate the Provost. It shows how times change as we get older. There is only one question—which I think is more a Committee point—which came into my mind. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack said something about hypothecating the funds used for those in College which might be set apart for those living in houses. How long would this hypothecation continue? Would the governing body be charged with the complete education for several years after the war owing to a promise which was made during the war? I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Quickswood, has said, that a strong element of dictatorship is being introduced by the Bill, and one would like to know who really is the determining authority. Is it the Minister, is it the Lord President, or is it going to be the person who acts for them? Otherwise, noble Lords on these Benches support the Bill.

LORD RANKEILLOUR

My Lords, I only want to raise one point. This House is extremely jealous of entrusting large powers to the Executive, but it also has customary methods of restricting those powers. In this Bill large powers are given to make Orders in Council, no doubt subject to the consent of other authorities, but there is no provision for Parliament to review those Orders in Council, and I suggest that a good deal of suspicion and anxiety which is felt at giving these large powers would be allayed if in Committee the Government were to consent that any Order in Council would be laid before both Houses of Parliament, and either their assent should be required, or the customary thirty days should be allowed for a prayer to be made against them. I suggest that this is a practical consideration, and if it were adopted it would in no way harm the Bill, but it would be a considerable safeguard against possible abuse.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I hope that the House may now be prepared to give the Bill its Second Reading. If I may, I will just say one or two words before I put the Question. As regards the point just put by my noble friend, I will gladly consider the suggestion which he makes, but I would prefer not to give any assurance about that at the moment, nor would he, I think, expect me to do so. The right reverend Prelate sees in this Bill more revolution than I am able to find in it myself. I agree that it effects a certain change, a change which is limited in the terms of the Bill to the war period, but I do not think that a change of this sort is one which really could be described as a revolution in education. He asked, and very naturally asked, what was the source of the Bill. Well, the Bill is a Government Bill. It may be all the better or it may be all the worse for that, but that is what it is; it is a Bill which is promoted by the Government as a whole, not by any particular Minister, after very full consideration, as I happen to know.

But at the same time it is material to know that on May 9, 1940—well within the period of "temporary insanity"—there was a full meeting of governors and headmasters, not of course limited to the public schools, but of different classes of schools, at the Charterhouse, and there it was agreed that a Standing Joint Committee of Governors and Headmasters should be set up, and the Committee of the Headmasters' Conference was empowered to nominate it. The Headmasters' Conference did so. I believe I am right in saying that it consists of five governors and five headmasters. It was admittedly provisional in this sense, that it cannot commit, and does not seek to commit, the governors of any particular school, but I would have thought that, as far as it was possible to gather the views and the helpful suggestions of this important body of men, the governors and headmasters of these schools, what had been done was not an unreasonable way of doing it. There was a slip in the letter written by my noble friend to The Times, because I see that he said that that provision about capital was, as he was informed, put in by the Government, and not suggested by the Joint Committee of Governors and Headmasters. That is an error. I have made inquiry, in fact I have seen the document, and the Committee of the Governors and Headmasters did in their proposals include capital as well as income.

Although the matter has been already very gracefully referred to by my noble friend Lord Mersey, I must be allowed to say on my own behalf—and I am sure it is what the whole House feels—what a delight it is to us to have had this first contribution from the noble Lord, who did not conceal from us that he was the Provost of Eton. Noble Lords will realise in time, as I with long House of Commons experience have long known, that there is nobody who can put a matter more persuasively, while sometimes I think being a little extreme in his view, and nobody who can urge' the familiar objection that the language of the Statute is dangerously wide, more ingeniously and with more amusing illustration. But, after all, there are one or two checks. It would be a mistake to suppose that my noble friend could get a new suit of clothes merely because the other members of the governing body of Eton thought it was high time he should be so provided. It would be necessary also to secure the approval of the Government of the day to an Order in Council embodying this permission. It would be necessary to have the special attention of the Lord President of the Council given to the matter. It would only be when the Government of the country and the War Cabinet were prepared to take the responsibility of first diverting the funds of this great institution that my noble friend would find himself more conveniently apparelled. The argument from an extreme illustration is not always very apposite.

I ask the House to give a Second Reading to this Bill because it does unquestionably seek to meet what is an immediate and very serious anxiety. The right reverend Prelate says we should not be so rash. He considered that the number of those attending in this House at the present moment was not large enough to justify such a step. I can only say it is a larger number than I can recall having seen in the House on most occasions since I have been here. Of course there are many noble Lords who are absent, but while fully sympathising with the feeling of the right reverend Prelate that we should examine these matters carefully and not proceed rashly, I venture to remind him and the House that what is happening here is that a large number of schools are in the greatest possible immediate danger. It may be that the right thing to do is to say, as the right reverend Prelate suggested, that we do not know enough about the future, but that would put a stop to almost all the war legislation which we try to pass. When you are faced with a practical emergency known in detail in the case of some schools, I venture respectfully to submit to the House that' it would be reasonable to let this Bill go forward and to recognise that it does not embody some immense revolutionary change but is an attempt to bring very much needed help in certain specific quarters, for the period of the war only, when the governors of the school in question and those responsible for drawing the Order in Council, the Board of Education, the Lord President of the Council, and the Government as a whole feel that they are prepared to stand by and support the measure.

THE EARL OF SELBORNE

My Lords, before the Lord Chancellor puts the Question, I should like to remind him, because he alluded to the Joint Committee of Governors and Headmasters, that the headmasters were elected by the Headmasters' Conference, while the governors have been elected by nobody. How they got on that body I do not know, but there was no organised body of governors to elect them like the headmasters, so that at the present moment they do not represent anybody.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.