Sitting of 26 April 1955

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (COLNE VALLEY SEWERAGE BOARD)
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Housing and Local Government relating to the Colne Valley Sewerage Board, presented by Mr. Sandys; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills and to be printed. [Bill 79.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  NATIONAL FINANCE

    Budget Proposals (Publicity)
    Sir W. Darlingasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in view of restricted sources of information at present available to large sections of the public, particularly in London, he will arrange, by leaflets and posters, in post offices and elsewhere, to set forth the factual terms of the Budget of 19th April, 1955.
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): The situation has changed, and I think the Budget proposals are widely known. No special action therefore seems called for, but a poster presenting the national revenue and expenditure in graphic form will, as in previous years, be widely distributed.
    Sir W. Darling: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that answer, may I take it that he believes in the old adage that good wine needs no bush?
    Mr. Woodburn: Is the right hon. Gentleman not apprehensive that this might contradict previous posters which the Conservatives have issued?
    Mr. Butler: No, Sir. This has nothing to do with Conservative posters. Each
    736
    year it has been the habit to put the Budget out in its graphic form—that is to say, the literal facts of the Budget, so that they can be studied by the taxpayer. The more the taxpayer studies them the more satisfied he will be.
    Mr. G. Jeger: Does not the Chancellor think that it will be very comforting to those pensioners who have a reduction in their pensions book, particularly for disability allowances, to discover, from the information which he and his party will give them, that other members of the community have had large Income Tax rebates?
    Mr. Butler: As I said yesterday in putting a question to the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), who spoke on Second Reading of the Finance Bill from the Opposition Front Bench, the position is that we shall have to examine whether such pensioners are worse off or not. Many pensioners are better off. I said that I should be only too glad to look into the case which I think the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East is to send to me.
    Mr. Callaghan: I hope the letter has already reached the Chancellor. May I ask him whether he will examine it to see whether the dependant's allowance which was paid to this woman will be reduced so that she suffers a reduction in that pension of 5s. a week because of the increase in her old-age pension of 7s. 6d.? Is not this a mean action?
    Mr. Butler: I will certainly examine it, with the advice of my right hon. Friend who is responsible for this Department.

    Income Tax (Budget Proposals)
    Mr. Fernyhoughasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the total amount of Income Tax paid in the financial year ended 5th April, 1955, by the 2,400,000 taxpayers now removed from liability altogether as a result of his recent Budget.
    Mr. Chetwyndasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the total estimated Income Tax relief to the 2,400,000 individuals who have been relieved of liability for payment of Income Tax.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The estimated cost of the tax relief given by the Budget to the 2,400,000 taxpayers who will be

    737
    removed altogether from liability is £4 million. It is not possible to say what this particular group of taxpayers paid in 1954–55, as a number of them would then have been in different income groups or different family circumstances.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this begins to put his Budget in something like a true perspective? Can he, for the information of the House, say whether the Inland Revenue recommended that it was not economic to collect this tax, and how much it was costing to collect the £4 million from these 2,400,000 people?
    Mr. Butler: The second part of the question would require a separate Question, as I have not the exact figures with me. As for putting my Budget in perspective, I myself had indicated that the amounts involved were small, and, as that represented the truth, I do not see how I can put the truth in a different perspective.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Is not this relief of something just over 1s. a week to the bulk of these people—[HON. MEMBERS: "Less."]—derisory in view of the Chancellor's claim that it gives them an incentive to produce more?
    Mr. Butler: I have never particularly referred to incentives in relation to the 2,400,000. As my distinguished predecessor, the late Sir Stafford Cripps, observed on more than one occasion, we cannot take off more tax than people pay. That is in fact what I have done; I have taken off the tax which they pay.
    Mr. Callaghan: To get the arithmetic right, is it not the case that the average relief which each of those 2,400,000 will get is about 9d. a week? Is not that a derisory amount?
    Mr. Butler: A detailed answer, giving the exact amounts—some of which I have worked out—would show that they differ very much. The hon. Member is only working out the average as against the figure of 2,400,000.
    Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the electors will be very interested to hear the views of the Opposition upon trying to stop taxing people?
    Mr. Jayasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much of the Income Tax
    738
    revenue remitted in his Budget will accrue to those receiving incomes of less than £10 a week.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: About £19 million.
    Mr. Jay: Is not that an extraordinarily small proportion of the £152 million which the Chancellor is remitting in Income Tax in his Budget?
    Mr. Butler: If the right hon. Gentleman were to add up the reliefs given during my tenure of office in 1952, 1953 and 1955, he would find—and I think this is the most remarkable feature—that there has been a combined relief of £116 million given to those people, which is a reduction of over 50 per cent. in taxation since this Government took office.
    Mr. Jayasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much of the Income Tax revenue remitted in his Budget will accrue to those with incomes over £2,000 a year; and what is the total relief given to personal incomes.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The total relief accruing to personal incomes in a full year as a result of the Budget changes is estimated at about £110 million, of which £25 million will go to incomes of over £2,000 a year.
    Mr. Jay: Is not that a very remarkable figure? Is the Chancellor telling us that a larger total of revenue will be remitted to the minority, with incomes of over £2,000 a year, than to all those with incomes of £10 a week or less?
    Mr. Butler: The percentage advantage upon the smaller incomes is much greater than the percentage advantage upon the larger.
    Mr. Jay: Is the Chancellor aware that what people are interested in is not the percentage but how much actual revenue they gain?
    Mr. Butler: I shall explain the matter in as simple English as I can. If one takes off a flat rate, it is natural that the people who pay more tax get more relief.
    Mr. Godber: Will my right hon. Friend remind the House how much was remitted to these taxpayers with small incomes in the last Budget of the previous Government?
    Mr. Callaghan: Is the Chancellor aware that his last two answers mean

    739
    that 250,000 Surtax payers get more relief than 10 million people whose incomes are less than £10 a week?
    Mr. Butler: The relief in the higher grades is about 4¼ per cent. and in the lower grades about 15 per cent., so there is a very considerable difference. It shows that, in so far as one can take something off everybody, I have endeavoured to take more, in proportion, off the lower than the higher grades.
    Mr. Woodburn: Can the Chancellor make clear the fact that, in addition to taking these small amounts off the tax-payers with lower incomes, he has also added a considerable amount of indirect taxation during the last two or three years—for instance, through increased fares owing to the cost of petrol?
    Mr. Butler: I have not added nearly so much by way of indirect taxation as was done in the Socialist Budgets.
    Mr. Jay: Can the Chancellor say whether this extraordinary result was deliberately intended or was accidental?
    Mr. Butler: Everything I do is intentional.
    Mr. Chetwyndasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the number of taxpayers in the income groups below £500, £500-£700, £700-£1,000, £l,000-£2,000 and £2,000 and over, respectively; and whether he will give the estimated total Income Tax relief given to the taxpayers in each income group.
    Mr. E. Fletcherasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many persons with incomes of £500 a year and less at present pay Income Tax, how many persons with incomes of between £500 and £2,000 a year, and how many persons with incomes of over £2,000 a year.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: As the reply contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Can the Chancellor say whether the figures he is circulating continue the trend of his previous Budgets in giving more to the wealthy than to the poor?
    Mr. Butler: If the hon. Member will study the figures—which are in a table of a considerable size—he will be impressed
    740
    by the approximate amounts which fit each particular bracket to which he refers.
    Mr. Chetwynd: What does that mean?
    Mr. F. M. Bennett: When my right hon. Friend publishes these figures, will he consider also publishing a table showing the reductions which occurred in the same income scales when the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) reduced the standard rate?
    The following are the figures:

    Income range

    Estimated numbers liable to tax before Budget proposals*

    Tax reduction in a full year under the Budget proposals

    Thousands

    £ million

    Under £500

    …

    8,350

    19

    £500-£700

    …

    4,800

    24

    £700-£1,000

    …

    3,000

    22

    £1,000-£2,000

    …

    1,125

    20

    £2,000 and over

    …

    325

    25

    *A married couple are counted as a single unit and the allocation by range of income is based on their joint income.

    Mr. Doddsasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many persons employed in the United Kingdom at the latest convenient date were not required to pay Income Tax.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: I regret that this information is not available.
    Mr. Dodds: Will the right hon. Gentleman say why this information is not available? Is it not very important?
    Mr. Butler: It is extremely important, but it is not available. The position is that the Income Tax statistics do not differentiate between those employed and other categories, such as pensioners, self-employed persons and rentiers. If the hon. Member wants an approximate answer to a general question, leaving out the word "employed," I would refer him to the "National Income Blue Book." which shows that there were some 253 million people with incomes—counting husband and wife as one—and that the number paying tax at that time was 15¾ million. This is likely to increase to 17½ million in 1955–56 owing to the increased wage rates. That means that only 7¾ million people would be left not paying tax. and of these over 4 million

    741
    will benefit from the increase in National Insurance pensions. This shows how very comprehensive this tax reduction is.
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what additional Income Tax will be collected by cutting the first reduced rate band from £100 to £60.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: No taxpayer will pay more tax as a result of the Budget proposals taken as a whole. The reduction in the width of the first reduced rate band is designed to restrict the benefit from the increases in the single and married allowances to the lower income and thus achieve, in a simpler way, the object of the Royal Commission in putting forward its scheme for a minimum earned income relief.
    Lieut-Colonel Lipton: Why does not the Chancellor want to answer this Question? I am asking him how much additional tax is going to be collected by cutting this rate band from £100 to £60. That is all I want to know. I do not want to know what other things are to be set off against it. Will he answer my Question?
    Mr. Butler: I have done my best to give the hon. and gallant Gentleman the best answer I can.
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer for an estimate of the additional cost of cutting Income Tax by 6d. in each of the reduced rates for all Income Tax payers earning less than £10 a week; and how many taxpayers would benefit thereby.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: I assume that the hon. and gallant Member intends the reduction of 6d. for persons earning less than £10 a week to take the place of the reduction of 3d. already proposed in the Budget. On that assumption, the additional cost over and above the cost of the Budget proposals would be about £9 million and the number of taxpayers benefiting would be about 6½ million. Such a scheme, however, would not only be quite impracticable for P.A.Y.E.; it would also be most inequitable, since nearly all the relief would go to single persons or childless married couples and hardly any to the married man with a family.
    Lieut-Colonel Lipton: Why is the Chancellor seeking an excuse for not
    742
    giving relief to the people who need it most? [HON. MEMBERS: "He has given it."] By the smaller expenditure of £9 million, would he not benefit a large number of people who need it far more than some of the people who will benefit?
    Mr. Butler: I have tried to give benefit more to the married man with a family than to the single man or the childless couple. In that I am following the advice of the Royal Commission and my own instincts, and I am sorry that I cannot have the hon. and gallant Member with me.
    Captain Pilkington: In view of all these electioneering questions, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the great majority of people are far better off as a result of this Budget than they were under the Labour Government?
    Mr. Butler: The answer is not only "Yes, Sir" but that if the benefits in this Budget are added to the benefits in the Budgets of 1952 and 1953, there is, as I have said, a 50 per cent. improvement in the case of those receiving less than £10 a week.
    Mr. E. Fletcherasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the total estimated loss to the revenue resulting from changes in Income Tax in respect of personal incomes; how much of this is in respect of incomes of £2,000 a year and upwards; and how much in respect of incomes up to and including £500 a year.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The estimated relief to personal income is £110 million in a full year, of which £25 million will accrue to incomes of £2,000 and over and £19 million to incomes of £500 or less.
    Mr. Fletcher: Does this mean that far more tax remission is given to the relatively small number of people who pay tax with incomes of £2,000 a year and upwards in comparison with the much larger number of people who pay tax and earn £500 a year or less?
    Mr. Butler: I have said that the ratio of relief is as to 4¼ per cent. for those in the higher income bracket and as to 15 per cent. for those in the lower bracket.
    Mr. E. Fletcherasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much of the estimated loss of £116 million to the revenue resulting from the cuts in the standard rate and reduced rates of Income

    743
    Tax is in respect of the undistributed profits of companies; how much is in respect of interest payments; and how much in respect of company dividends.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The relief in respect of the undistributed profits of companies and other corporate bodies is estimated at about £42 million in a full year. It is not possible to give corresponding estimates for interest and dividends.
    Mr. E. Johnsonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many people he estimates will receive net incomes, after deduction of Income Tax and Surtax, of over £6,000 a year and of over £10,000 a year in the next financial year.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: This must necessarily be a matter of speculation but, on the assumptions as to the growth in personal incomes underlying the Budget estimates and allowing for the proposed changes in taxation, the number of net incomes after tax of £6,000 or more may be between 450 and 500, of which about 50 may be over £10,000.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Would the Chancellor not agree that that is 400 or 500 too many?
    Mr. Butler: It is a matter of opinion as to how much income is too much.
    Mr. E. Johnsonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what will be the average amount, paid yearly, in Income Tax and Surtax, where applicable, after the proposed new rates come into force, by those with incomes of over £10,000 a year, of between £2,000 and £10,000 a year, and under £10 a week respectively.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The amounts are £12,300, £1,315 and £11, respectively. The last figure relates only to those with incomes above the new effective exemption limit of £180.
    Mr. Johnson: Would my right hon. Friend not agree that these figures put the whole position as regards Income Tax relief into rather better perspective than do most of the questions asked earlier this afternoon by hon. Members opposite?
    Mr. Butler: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for coming along at the end to act as long stop.
    Mr. Dodds: In view of the unsatisfactory answers of the Chancellor of the
    744
    Exchequer, I give notice that I will raise these matters in the General Election.

    Textiles (Tax Receipts)
    Mr. Jayasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the total revenue from Purchase Tax on all textiles in 1954–55.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: I would refer the right hon. Member to the reply my hon. Friend gave to the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) on 19th April last.
    Mr. Jay: Would it be true to say that out of a total of about £40 million raised in relation to textiles, the Chancellor has remitted only between £2 million and £3 million a year?
    Mr. Butler: The right hon. Gentleman's calculations are, as usual, approximately correct.

    Import Prices and World Prices
    Mr. Doddsasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the percentage trend of world prices and United Kingdom import prices from 1950 to 1954, taking 1950 as 100.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The index of average values of United Kingdom imports, published in the Monthly Digest of Statistics, rose by 14 per cent. from 1950 to 1954. The index of average values is obtained by comparing the actual value of trade in 1954 with its estimated value at 1950 prices. Changes in the index are therefore affected by changes in the composition of trade as well as by changes in prices, so that the index gives only an approximate measure of changes in prices. I regret that no appropriate index of world prices exists which can reasonably be compared with the average values of United Kingdom imports.
    Mr. Dodds: How can the Chancellor give that answer now, when on 24th November last he gave the figures for which I ask, which appear in column 145 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of that date? Do not these figures illustrate the tremendous handicap suffered by the Labour Government in 1951 and the tremendous advantages which have been enjoyed by this Government? Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that it is all the more difficult to understand why the Government have failed so completely to keep their pledge to reduce the cost of living?
    Mr. Butler: It so happens that in composing this reply I followed the lines of a reply made to the right hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. Woodburn) on 8th February, 1955, and the further reply given upon 24th November last, to which the hon. Member has referred—so I do not think that I am doing anything really original.
    Mr. Stokes: In order that we may have all these matters considered together, will the Chancellor state the fall in the United Kingdom import index between the autumn of 1951 and 1954?
    Mr. Butler: If the right hon. Gentleman will put down a Question in that form, I will give him the exact figure.

    Savings Certificates (Encashments)
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the average weekly rate at which National Savings Certificates have been encashed since the beginning of 1955; and what is the corresponding figure for 1954.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: The average weekly total of National Savings Certificates encashed during the first 16 weeks of 1955 was £24 million. For the same period in 1954 the figure was £25 million.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer aware that this is the first satisfactory reply I have had from him today?

  DEPARTMENT (TRANSFER)
  Mr. Greyasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if he is now prepared to make a statement on the transfer of a Department to the North-East.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I hope to be able to do so in a few days' time.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT

    Cement Dust Nuisance, North-West Kent
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Housing and Local Goverment if he is aware of the concern in North-West Kent at the continued heavy deposits of dust
    746
    from cement factories over a wide area; and what action is now being taken by his Department to deal with the nuisance.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes): My right hon. Friend knows that the dust from cement works in this area has been causing concern. No means of complete prevention are known at present, but his alkali inspectors, in co-operation with the cement manufacturers, are continuing their efforts to reduce the emissions as much as practicable. As the hon. Member will be aware, I am proposing to visit two of the works concerned early next week.
    Mr. Dodds: While thanking the Parliamentary Secretary for his answer and supporting the visit which he is to make, may I ask him to explain how it is that after years of agitation because of this terrible nuisance it happens that he has chosen to make his visit to the area almost on the eve of the General Election? What does he hope to achieve from this visit to improve the situation.

    Sewerage Schemes, Biddulph Moor and Rushton
    Mr. H. Daviesasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what applications he has received and what grants he has made, or intends to make, to the Biddulph Council to facilitate the sewering of the Biddulph Moor area in the Leek Division.
    Mr. Deedes: An application made in 1939 was not proceeded with owing to the war. Since the war, the council has not applied to sewer the area and no question of grant has arisen.
    Mr. Davies: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say whether the Minister considered the making of a grant at the time of the 1939 application? Can the Parliamentary Secretary say how much the grant for the job would have been then?
    Mr. Deedes: The application did not cover the area which the hon. Member has in mind—Biddulph Moor. We would of course be prepared to consider, without prejudice, any question of a grant if the application were made.
    Mr. Mitchisonasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he is aware that the part of the

    747
    sewerage scheme at Rushton, Northamptonshire, for which he authorised advertising for tenders in June, 1953, is now virtually completed; and whether, in the interests of economy, he will now accede to the request made by the Kettering Rural District Council in their letters of 9th June and 5th October, 1954, and authorise them to proceed with the remainder of the scheme, while the contractors' labour and equipment are still on site.
    Mr. Deedes: Yes, Sir.

    Water Supplies, North Westmorland
    Mr. Vaneasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he is aware of the difficulty many milk producers and others in North Westmorland are meeting by reason of repeated failure of the water supply; and whether he will give an assurance that the public supply will be sufficient in the summer months to cool milk properly.
    Mr. Deedes: My right hon. Friend knows of seasonal shortages in parts of this rural district and he will consider sympathetically the council's proposals to improve supplies. They recently submitted a £28,000 scheme as a first stage of a larger programme. This will be investigated locally as soon as they send in further information for which they have been asked.
    Mr. Vane: Can my hon. Friend give the people who live in this district an assurance that there will be no unnecessary hold-ups in his Department so that these improvements can be put into effect as soon as possible?
    Mr. Deedes: I am sure they will go ahead as quickly as they can to produce the information asked for, and I shall do my best to act as quickly as possible.
    Mr. Vane: I thank my hon. Friend.

    Town and Country Planning
    Mr. Powellasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he will consider taking steps to extend the period during which application may be made for payments under Part I of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1954.
    Mr. Deedes: My right hon. Friend has today made a regulation extending until the end of June the period within which claims may be made. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is taking similar action.
    Mr. Powell: Will the Government take all the steps in their power to ensure that the fullest publicity is given to this extension for the people to whom it applies?
    Mr. Deedes: Yes, that will certainly be done.
    Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: Will that regulation have to come before both Houses of Parliament or this House only, or not before Parliament at all?
    Mr. Deedes: It will not have to come before the House of Commons.
    Mr. Peytonasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government what consultations he has with other Government Departments after an inquiry has been held under the Town and Country Planning Acts and before he makes his decision.
    Mr. Deedes: Other Government Departments are consulted where questions of policy affecting them arise.
    Mr. Peyton: Is my hon. Friend aware that this sort of procedure is arousing growing anxiety amongst a growing section of public opinion? Surely it is a denial of justice and makes a farce of the procedure that the appellant, the party principally concerned, should not be intimately and fully informed of the case he has to answer? Will my hon. Friend look into it?
    Mr. Deedes: In general this raises issues of constitutional principle, with which, obviously, I cannot deal in answer to a supplementary question. I think my hon. Friend has one particular case in mind which involves the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, and on that I have already sent him certain observations.

  HOUSING

    Local Authority Advances
    Mr. MacCollasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government the amount of advances made by local authorities in England and Wales under

    749
    the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts and Housing Acts during the 12 months beginning 1st April, 1953, and 1st April, 1954, for the acquisition, construction, conversion or alteration of houses.
    Mr. Deedes: Figures for the year 1954–55 are not yet available. As the answer to the remainder of the Question contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following are the figures:

    The figures for 1st April, 1953, to 31st March, 1954, are as follows:

    £

    Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts

    (a) for acquisition of houses

    10,270,340

    (b) for construction of houses

    10,020,792

    Housing Act, 1949

    (a) for acquisition of houses

    4,740,009

    (b) for construction of houses

    3,825,125

    (c) for conversion of buildings

    41,553

    (d) for alteration of houses

    142,707

    Housing Act, 1936

    Advances to Housing Associations for construction of houses

    3,018,797

    House Purchase (Guaranteed Loans)
    Mr. MacCollasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government the amount of building society advances guaranteed by his Department in accordance with his Circular 42/54.
    Mr. Deedes: The 915 local authorities in England and Wales who have up to the present agreed to operate the schemes of guarantee referred to in Circular 42/54, have been given general consent to grant guarantees in individual cases without further reference to him. My right hon. Friend, is not, therefore, aware of the amount of building society advances which has been guaranteed. He has asked local authorities to inform him of the number of houses in respect of which guarantees had been given up to 31st March, 1955, but it is likely to be some time before the returns from all local authorities are received.
    Mr. MacColl: In view of the fact that this represents an obligation upon the Government as well as upon local authorities, is it not really extraordinary that the Minister does not know to what extent he has committed public funds in this matter?
    Mr. Deedes: We have only just called for the returns, which are called for at stated intervals. The figures eventually will be available.

    Ex-Police Officers
    Sir E. Erringtonasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he will extend his Circular 24/55, of 8th March, 1955, relating to the housing of ex-Service men, to the case of ex-police officers.
    Mr. Deedes: No, Sir. It is better to tackle one problem at a time.
    Sir E. Errington: Is my hon. Friend aware that in the case of an ex-sergeant of police, of whom I have informed him, neither the Home Secretary, the appropriate constabulary nor the local authority is prepared to find accommodation for him and his wife and three children, except in an institution?
    Mr. Deedes: The most helpful thing would be if my right hon. Friend or I were to make inquiries in this case, which, in consultation with my right hon. Friend, I am quite willing to do.

    Worcestershire Development Plan
    Mr. Higgsasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government when he will be able to give his decision on the Worcestershire County Development Plan.
    Mr. Deedes: The Worcestershire Plan has to be considered together with those of the City of Birmingham and the counties of Staffordshire and Warwickshire. The issues involved are by no means simple and will take some while longer to resolve.
    Mr. Higgs: Will my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend bear in mind that particularly in that part of the county which is near to Birmingham, there is considerable pressure for building land and that the hand of the county council in dealing fairly with that pressure would be much strengthened if the development plan were available and approved?
    Mr. Deedes: Yes, Sir.

    Huyton-with-Roby
    Mr. H. Wilsonasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government why he has restricted the Huyton-with-Roby Urban District Council to a programme of 150 council houses in 1955.
    Mr. Deedes: The right hon. Gentleman is misinformed. My right hon. Friend is assured that the council will complete well over 200 houses this year.
    Mr. Wilson: Since the council itself has been informed that 150 was the limit, but since it is capable of building up to 400 houses this year if it were not for the intervention of the Minister, will the hon. Gentleman look into the figure again and see whether he cannot step up the allocation?
    Mr. Deedes: We will certainly look into the figure.

    Bungalow Estate, Knowsley
    Mr. H. Wilsonasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he is aware that houses on the ex-Government bungalow estate at Knowsley, Lancashire, are now (standing empty awaiting demolition; and if, in view of the shortage of housing accommodation in the area, he will now reverse his Department's decision that the land should now revert to agricultural use.
    Mr. Deedes: There were 496 substandard dwellings on this estate, of which four have so far been demolished and a further 11 are now empty. The rural district council proposes to demolish these in pursuance of its settled intention, agreed with the county council as local planning authority, to clear the whole site by 1960. My right hon. Friend thinks that this policy is right, as he does not think that people should live in these sub-standard dwellings longer than is necessary; and if the whole site is to be cleared in five years this must be done by stages.
    Mr. Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these temporary and sub-standard buildings provide far better accommodation than much that is available to thousands of people living on Mersey-side at the present time? These bungalows could be excellent old-age pensioners' bungalows. It is an entirely wrong time to be pulling down houses which are perfectly habitable.
    Mr. Deedes: These houses, as I think the right hon. Gentleman agrees, are substandard and have to be demolished by 1960, and they must be demolished as they become vacant; otherwise the sites cannot be prepared.
    Mr. Stokes: Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that had there been rating of site values these houses would never have been allowed to become sub-standard and that something else would have been put in their place?
    Mr. Deedes: That is a different question, although an important one.

  GRANITE INDUSTRY, ABERDEEN (EMPLOYMENT)
  Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Minister of Labour if he will make a statement on the state of employment in the granite industry in and about the City of Aberdeen.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Watkinson): There has been a slight decrease in the level of employment in the granite industry in the Aberdeen district since 1950, as work on monumental masonry is gradually declining. There has, however, recently been an increase in architectural work, and the prospects on this side appear to be good. More apprentices are being engaged and some overtime is being worked. Employment in the granite quarries has increased slightly since 1950. Unemployment is very low on both sides of the industry.
  Mr. Hughes: Does the Parliamentary Secretary realise the gravity of the situation caused by foreign competition in this matter, and will he consult the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation with a view to inducing him to have granite used for kerbstones in his new plans, as that would probably relieve the industry for the next 10 years at least?
  Mr. Watkinson: I will certainly look into that matter, but the present figures are only nine males unemployed in granite preparing and seven males wholly unemployed in granite quarrying.

  SCOTLAND

    Peterhead Prison (Complaint)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is taking to investigate and resolve the complaints made by a prisoner in Peterhead Prison, Aberdeenshire, and contained in the letter sent to him by the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Henderson Stewart): My right hon. Friend has received a full report on the complaints sent to him by the hon. and learned Member and has replied to his letter. My right hon. Friend does not consider that any further action is necessary.
    Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Under-Secretary of State for that reply and for his letter, may I ask whether the particular prisoner was given an opportunity of seeing the visiting committee and elaborating his complaints, as that does not appear from either the present Answer or the letter?
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: I will let the hon. and learned Member know.

    Health Visitors (Elderly Sick)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is now taking to increase the number of health visitors for the elderly sick in Scotland.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. N. Browne): An increase in the number of health visitors for this purpose, as for others, depends mainly on improved recruitment to the profession. Means of securing this are under consideration by the working party on the work, recruitment and training of health visitors, whose report is expected later this year.
    Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Under-Secretary of State for that reply, may I ask whether he realises that this very useful service is under-staffed and under-paid, and that the conditions are bad? Will he do something to make the service more attractive to new entrants?
    Mr. Browne: Yes; we can none of us be satisfied that there are enough health visitors, but we are awaiting the report of the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council, about which the hon. and learned Gentleman asked a Question on 8th March.

    Representation of the People (Postal Voting)
    Mr. Spenceasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will introduce legislation to amend Section 9 of the Representation of the People Act. 1948,
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    so as to enable him, by regulation, to prescribe a list of conferences, attendance at which would entitle the individual elector to a postal vote.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: My right hon. Friend regrets that such legislation cannot be contemplated at present.
    Mr. Spence: Has consideration been given to the laying of orders under Section 67 of this Act, and could not anything have been done in that way?
    Mr. Browne: It is not Section 67 of the 1948 Act to which my hon. Friend refers, but Section 42 of the 1949 Act. My right hon. Friend is advised that the power conferred by the Section to make regulations, about
    "… matters incidental to the provisions of this Act so far as those provisions relate to … voting by post … "
    could not extend to making regulations to modify the qualifications for absent voters laid down in the Act itself.
    Mr. Woodburn: Was the Secretary of State consulted as to the suitability of this date for the Election, when the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is being held? Could not some consideration have been given to the normal activities of the people of this country when the Government announced the date of the Election?
    Mr. Browne: That is another question.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the Under-Secretary of State aware that the Government, in ignoring the General Assembly, are once more carrying out their traditional policy of putting Mammon before God?
    Mr. Browne: I think it will be helpful if I put this matter quite right. The decision on a claim to vote as an absent voter rests with the electoral registration officer, subject to the right of appeal to the sheriff, and from the sheriff to a tribunal of three judges of the Court of Session. It is not a matter for my right hon. Friend but for the judicial machinery provided in the Statute.
    Mr. Spence: But is my hon. Friend aware that certain electoral officers have already stated their intention of refusing this vote, and that they are thereby influencing the decisions of others?
    Mr. Browne: I am afraid that that is not a matter for my right hon. Friend.
    Mr. Spence: In view of the very great importance of this matter, may I give you notice, Mr. Speaker, of my intention to ask your permission to raise this on the Adjournment next Tuesday?

    Rothes Colliery, Fife (Manpower)
    Mr. Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a further statement with regard to manpower requirements in the Rothes colliery in Fife, consequent on recent discussions with the National Coal Board.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: My right hon. Friend is expecting a report shortly from the National Coal Board of its revised manpower proposals and housing requirements at Glenrothes. This Report will then be discussed with the New Town Corporation and the county council.
    Mr. Hamilton: Can the hon. Gentleman explain why there has been unnecessary delay in this matter? Is he aware that the opinion is growing in Glenrothes and the Development Area of East Fife that it has been deliberately withheld to stultify industrial development in that area?
    Mr. Browne: Oh, no. My right hon. Friend is very concerned about this position. There have been several changes in the target of population and in the starting date for the mine since 1948, and this has caused uncertainty. This uncertainty must continue, I am afraid, until the National Coal Board, which has had its own troubles, can tell us how many miners will be employed and how the build-up programme will be made.

    Geriatric Services, Fifeshire
    Mr. Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland the nature and extent of the geriatric services in the County of Fife; and whether he will consider the extension of such services in the next financial year.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: Suitable provision for the care of the elderly sick involves the joint efforts of all branches of the health and welfare services, and a full account of the position in Fife is not possible within the limits of Question Time. There are at present 87 hospital beds in Fife specifically set aside for aged and
    756
    chronic patients, including 13 beds in Methilhaven Home used by arrangement with the County Council. In addition to its general programme for the improvement of the hospital service in Fife, the regional hospital board is at present considering possible short-term measures to ease the shortage of accommodation for the aged sick.
    Mr. Hamilton: Whilst thanking the Minister for the information he has given me by letter, may I ask why, in view of the success of the geriatric units in Dundee and Glasgow, the Minister is not taking more energetic action to extend that kind of unit?
    Mr. Browne: I can assure the hon. Member that we are taking what action we can. As I think he knows, it would be fair to say that this figure of 87 hospital beds is not the only figure. There are 350 available for old people in local authority homes and 107 in voluntary homes.

    Building Costs and Loans (Interest Charges)
    Mr. Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland to what extent the recent increase in the Bank Rate will affect housebuilding costs and rents in the new towns in Scotland.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: The small increase in loan charges involved by the increase in the borrowing rate from 3¾ per cent. to 4 per cent. is more than offset by the general reduction in housebuilding costs in the new towns in the last 12 months. There has been no change in the level of rents.
    Mr. Hamilton: Is the Minister now saying that the rents of the new houses which are being built in Glenrothes and East Kilbride will not be increased as a result of the increase in the Bank Rate?
    Mr. Browne: If I could foretell the future, I should perhaps be forecasting other matters than the question of future rents at Glenrothes.
    Mr. Manuelasked the Secretary of State for Scotland the estimated increased financial burden to local authorities in connection with their building programmes for this year because of the recent increases in the loan charges of the Public Works Loan Board.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: The average amount borrowed by Scottish local authorities from the Public Works Loan Board for all purposes over the last three years is about £30 million a year. On this basis the higher interest rates now charged by the Board would involve additional annual charges estimated at £60,000 a year, of which the greater part would relate to the building programmes of the local authorities.
    Mr. Manuel: Is the Under-Secretary aware that this increased on-cost, particularly in the case of housebuilding, will fall very hardly on the small local authorities in Scotland and in many cases will mean that not so many houses will be built? Can he inform the House whether it is his intention to recommend an increased subsidy to meet this heavy on-cost to local authorities in connection with interest rates?
    Mr. Browne: The present housing subsidy was fixed in 1951 and was based on an interest rate of 4¼ per cent. There has been no reduction in the Scottish subsidy since then, and the interest rate is now 4 per cent. I think that it would be wrong if I held out any hope of an increased subsidy.
    Captain Duncan: Will my hon. Friend encourage the larger local authorities to go to the market instead of to the Public Works Loan Board? Is he aware that the best of the small local authorities do not go to the Board at all?
    Mr. Browne: Yes, Sir.

  MINISTRY OF WORKS

    Ministry of Education Building, Curzon Street (Garage)
    Mr. G. Darlingasked the Minister of Works when the basement of the Ministry of Education building in Curzon Street, S.W.1, will be restored to its use as a public garage.
    The Minister of Works (Mr. Nigel Birch): The basement of this building has never been used as a public garage, and I cannot make it available for this purpose.
    Mr. Darling: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I have visited this garage and that it is being used as a garage at
    758
    the moment, even though it is not a public garage? Is he aware that in it there are quite a number of Ministry of Education vehicles? They are covered with dust, having been there for months and months waiting to be sold. Is he aware that this building could be used as a public garage to ease the congestion in Central London very quickly?
    Mr. Birch: I am not responsible for the dust on Ministry of Education vehicles. I have written very fully to the hon. Member about the use to which this garage is being put, and I am convinced that it is being put to good use.
    Mr. Darling: I have had information from the right hon. Gentleman and I have also visited the garage. Is he aware that the facts he has given to me in his letter are very largely incorrect, both as to the use to which the garage is being put and as to the area available for use as a public garage? Would the right hon. Gentleman or his Parliamentary Secretary visit the garage with me so that we can see for ourselves whether the facts he has given are correct or not?
    Mr. Birch: I will certainly go into the matter again, but I have no reason at all to suppose that the facts I gave to the hon. Member are wrong.
    Mr. Manuel: Is the right hon. Gentleman going into the garage?

    Bungalow Estate, Knowsley
    Mr. H. Wilsonasked the Minister of Works the total expenditure, from 1941 to 1954, by the Government, including sewers, roads, pavements and drainage, on the former Ministry of Aircraft Production's bungalow estate at Knowsley. Lancashire.
    Mr. Birch: The information for the war years is not readily available, but records are being searched and I will write to the right hon. Member.
    Mr. Wilson: Since it is clear that several tens of thousands of pounds must have been spent on this estate and that the basic services installed could be used for a future permanent housing site, is it not truly monstrous that the estate should now revert to agriculture, for which purpose it is probably entirely unfitted?
    Mr. Birch: I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer given to him a

    759
    few minutes ago by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

    Westminster Hall (Commemorative Plaques)
    Mr. M. Stewartasked the Minister of Works whether he will cause to be placed in Westminster Hall a plaque commemorating the acquittal of the Seven Bishops on 30th June, 1688.
    Mr. Birch: No, Sir. A list of famous trials, including this one. is already displayed in the Hall.
    Mr. Stewart: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is already in Westminster Hall a plaque commemorating the impeachment of Warren Hastings and that the acquittal of the Seven Bishops is a much more important and creditable episode in our history?
    Mr. Birch: There are in Westminster Hall plaques recording three famous trials, but there are 26 trials in all on the list and I think that it would be inviduous to choose between them.
    Colonel Gomme-Doncan: Would my right hon. Friend not agree that, interesting as they are historically, these trials which are commemorated in Westminster Hall represent serious cases of English misjustice?

  BRITISH ARMY

    Personal Case
    Mr. George Craddockasked the Secretary of State for War why 22965124 Private Raymond Smith, Ordnance Depot, Tripoli, Middle East Land Forces (1), is held under arrest; and if he will, in view of recent medical reports on this soldier, order his immediate discharge.
    The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head): Private Smith was tried by court-martial on 15th March for striking a superior officer and drunkenness and is now serving a sentence of 84 days' detention. He is also awaiting trial for further offences which he is alleged to have committed whilst undergoing sentence. I have called for a full report on this case with particular reference to the soldier's medical condition and will write to the hon. Member as soon as I get it.
    Mr. Craddock: Whilst thanking the Minister for promising that report, may I ask if he will look further into the low mental category of this man? Will he not agree that the fact that he is on foreign service, coupled with his mental state, may have increased this man's hazards?

    Regimental Dinner, Blackdown (Mess Dress)
    Mr. Dribergasked the Secretary of State for War if he will investigate the circumstances in which a National Service officer, Mr. P. J. R. Breslin, serving as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Basic Training Battalion, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Blackdown, was ordered to leave a regimental dinner on 5th April, 1955, and served with dinner in his own room, because he had arrived in the ante-room of the mess wearing battledress; whether National Service officers are now required to purchase special mess dress; what additional uniform allowance is provided for this purpose; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Head: No officer is required to purchase mess kit, No. 1 dress or Service dress. The question of an allowance does not therefore arise. It is customary in many units for officers to change for mess either into mess kit, No. 1 dress, Service dress, a dinner-jacket or an ordinary suit, but it is not compulsory. In this particular incident this officer was known to have Service dress, but it was not known that he had disposed of it just before the guest night in question.
    Mr. Driberg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in this particular case, the officer disposed of his Service dress because he could not afford to go on keeping it, as he needed the money for civilian clothes? Is he also aware that dinner-jackets were compulsory at a dance which all officers were compelled to attend in this mess? Does he not agree that it is undesirable that a National Service man, fit to hold a commission on merit, should be debarred from doing so because he cannot afford to buy various kinds of uniform?
    Mr. Head: The hon. Member is drawing a very wide deduction from one incident. There was a mess meeting and this officer then had his Service dress and he was perfectly prepared to wear it. He

    761
    then disposed of it and had not told his commanding officer, "I have to come in battledress." This matter is purely voluntary and no officer can be compulsorily required to wear this dress.
    Mr. Shinwell: If the facts given by the right hon. Gentleman are correct, what is he doing about the commanding officer who acted irregularly and ordered this man to leave the mess and have dinner served in his own room. What will happen to the commanding officer?
    Mr. Head: This matter was due to a misunderstanding, because the officer was known to have a Service dress and one does not always expect that in a matter of a few days an officer will have disposed of it. The commanding officer thought that the officer had deliberately come in battledress as a sign of disrespect.
    Mr. Shinwell: Is it not remarkable the number of misunderstandings we have had since the right hon. Gentleman became Secretary of State for War, and is he going to condone a stupid action of this kind? What is wrong in any circumstances, in any atmosphere and in any place with wearing battledress while associated with Her Majesty's Forces?
    Mr. Head: As I have already said, it is perfectly in order for an officer to wear battledress. In this case a voluntary undertaking had been come to and there was a misunderstanding. As far as misunderstandings taking place are concerned, I think it is evident that they take place over a very wide area even where the right hon. Gentleman is concerned.
    Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Can my right hon. Friend say whether there is any type of person more despised by all ranks than the person who goes behind the back of his commanding officer and complains to his M.P.? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] If I may, I will put another point in an interrogative way. Can my right hon. Friend say whether in this case the normal military channels were used to make this complaint?
    Mr. Strachey: Will the Secretary of State make it perfectly clear that he repudiates the view which has just been put to him by his hon. and gallant Friend, and will he also make it clear that an officer, in drawing attention to what the Secretary of State himself has said is an irregularity, was doing a public service?
    Mr. Head: I have always said to this House, and it is well known throughout the Army, that anyone has a right to refer a matter to his Member of Parliament. I think hon. Members will acquit me of any charge that I have ever in any way attempted to get in the way of that or deny that right.
    Mr. Driberg: While appreciating that, would the right hon. Gentleman also reassure his hon. and gallant Friend by making it clear to him that in this case the officer concerned did submit the matter to his commanding officer, and can he say, further to his general point, whether a mess meeting has any right whatever to make rules which are in conflict with Queen's Regulations?
    Mr. Head: A mess meeting has no right to make such rules. What happened in this instance was they were going to have a guest night and there was a mess meeting. I suppose they decided what they were going to eat, who was going to attend and what they were going to wear. It is usual and natural that people do not want to feed in the evening in the clothes in which they work all day. This is the normal thing throughout life. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Hon. Members may be aware that miners do not sit down to their dinner in the clothes in which they have been down the mine. This meeting decided this, and I do not think that in any way hon. Members would think that wrong. What happened was that this was a voluntary arrangement; it is not regular throughout the Army. In this particular case the officer disposed of his Service dress between the date of the mess meeting and the guest evening. I think hon. Members will agree that this is an unusual circumstance. I say here and now that there is absolutely no regulation about officers not being able to wear battledress on these occasions.
    Mr. Driberg: In order to elaborate this very interesting argument, I beg to give notice that I shall seek your permission, Mr. Speaker, to raise the matter on the Adjournment before the dissolution.

    Discharged Soldiers (Medical Case Histories)
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for War if he will make arrangements under which men on being discharged ill or disabled from the Army

    763
    shall always be provided with a form authorising that their case histories be sent to their local doctor if this is desired by them.
    Mr. Head: The necessary information is already provided to the Ministry of Health for transmission to the civilian doctor in the case of individuals leaving the Army on medical grounds. I believe, however, that the hon. Member has in mind the case of a soldier who left the Army on other grounds but who also had a medical history. I agree that similar arrangements should be made for these men also, and I am arranging for this to be done.

    Illness (Notification to Next-of-Kin)
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for War if he will make a statement regarding revised arrangements for keeping the nearest relatives of soldiers in hospital informed about their condition.
    Mr. Head: When a soldier is admitted to hospital as a battle casualty or suffering from an injury resulting in the loss of an eye or limb or is dangerously ill or seriously ill, the next-of-kin is automatically informed. In cases of serious mental illness a letter is sent to the next-of-kin, but otherwise it is left to the man himself to decide who should be notified. He is given a free postcard with which to inform them and help in completing postcards when necessary is always available.
    Mr. Brockway: In view of the circumstances in the two cases which I raised during the Army Estimates debates, will the right hon. Gentleman go into this matter a little further in order to see that when men are ill in hospital someone should volunteer in the ward to write letters to their relatives if they so desire?
    Mr. Head: Yes, Sir. There are means whereby somebody can write a letter, but to make it statutory for the Army to inform the parents would not be right, nor in all cases would it be popular with the men concerned.

    Asian Civilian Staff, Kenya
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for War if an agreement has now been reached regarding the
    764
    negotiations with Asian civilian staff employed in the War Department in Kenya regarding the conditions of service.
    Mr. Head: As my hon. Friend explained in his recent letter to the hon. Member, agreement on a scheme of establishment has now been reached. Certain points of detail remain to be settled.
    Mr. Brockway: Whilst there has been some disappointment at the long delay in reaching the end of these negotiations, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this result will be appreciated by the Asian community in Kenya?

  TRADE AND COMMERCE

    Bede Trading Estate, Jarrow
    Mr. Fernyhoughasked the President of the Board of Trade how many factories were built on the Bede Trading Estate, Jarrow, up to October, 1951; and how many have been built since 1951.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Donald Kaberry): Between the end of the war and October, 1951, 18 Government-financed factories, having a total area of approximately 480,000 square feet, were built on the Bede Trading Estate. Since then four extensions, totalling 12,000 square feet have been built and the building of two further extensions, totalling 38,000 square feet is about to start.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Will the hon. Gentleman see that this information is passed to the Tory Central Office in order that the next "Popular Pictorial" that it sends out, and which refers to Jarrow and the unemployment in the pre-war years having been a myth, will be a little nearer to the truth than the statement in the April issue?
    Mr. H. Wilson: Do not the figures show that what is happening all over the country is that Development Area policy under the present Government is becoming a dead letter, and is that why the President of the Board of Trade has repeatedly over the last three years refused to issue a White Paper, as was originally promised at the time of the Act?
    Mr. Kaberry: Employment on the Bede Trading Estate has risen since the

    765
    end of 1951 from 1,899 to 2,082. Since October, 1951, 14 privately financed schemes of 260,000 square feet have been built and a further six schemes totalling 300,000 square feet have been started in the Jarrow area.

    German Cameras (Import)
    63 and 64. Mr. Swinglerasked the President of the Board of Trade (1) to what value he permitted the import of stereo cameras from Germany in the last year for which figures are available; and why such imports are so restricted.
    (2) what was the total value of imports of cameras and camera equipment from Germany in the last year for which figures are available; and if he will relax the restrictions on these imports.
    The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. A. R. W. Low): In 1954 imports of cameras and camera equipment from Western Germany totalled £876,800. Separate figures are not available for stereo cameras. Cinematograph cameras, other cameras of a Customs value not exceeding £5 10s. and most photographic equipment except lenses may be imported freely under open general licence. The restrictions on the remaining types are maintained for balance of payments reasons. These have been in force since the war and are reviewed from time to time together with the restrictions on other imports.
    Mr. Swingler: Is the Minister aware that his Department is preventing the import of stereo cameras altogether, that such cameras are not made in this country and are required by a number of undertakings here, and will he investigate this immediately and allow these cameras to come in?
    Mr. Low: I have investigated this matter since the hon. Gentleman wrote to my right hon. Friend. We are not stopping the imports of these stereo cameras completely; but there are quotas for their import from Western Germany. Those quotas were fully used last year, and I have every reason to think they will be fully used this year.
    Mr. Osborne: Is the Minister aware that camera interests in this country are concerned about the competition from Western Germany, and can he say whether
    766
    there is any export help given by the German Government to their manufacturers?
    Mr. Low: There is no special help so far as I am aware, but my hon. Friend will know that these import restrictions are imposed and maintained for balance of payments reasons and not for other reasons.

    Indian Cloth
    Mrs. Castleasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will now make a statement on the Government's proposals for dealing with the competition from imported Indian cloth, which is undermining the stability of the Lancashire cotton industry.
    Mr. Low: No, Sir. I have nothing to add to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last Friday.
    Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on 15th April the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce made publicly an appeal to the Government for immediate action and emphatically and unanimously recorded its concern at the delay in helping Lancashire? Is he aware also that the National Chamber of Trade, at its conference yesterday, repeated this call for action, and when will the Government listen to these non-partisan appeals by business men?
    Mr. Low: My right hon. Friend explained the position carefully to the House on Friday, and I think I remember the hon. Lady sitting opposite listening to him. I repeat that I have nothing to add to that explanation.
    Mr. H. Wilson: Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether the statement which the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated that we might expect before the Dissolution will refer only to changes in the Indian tariff on Lancashire goods, or will it deal also with the question of Indian exports into Great Britain?
    Mr. Low: No, Sir. I have already explained that I have nothing to add to the full statement made by my right hon. Friend. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman and the House that it would be much wiser and better advised to await the statement when it is made.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Sir W. Darling: On business, Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Leader of the House if he is aware that the Scottish Grand Committee this morning by midday unanimously passed without division the Public Libraries (Scotland) Bill? Can my right hon. Friend give me any indication as to the future progress of this agreed Measure?
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): I must congratulate my hon. Friend on the success of his Bill so far. If it is agreeable to the House as a whole, I think that the Government would be prepared to give facilities perhaps tomorrow night after Government business.
Mr. Attlee: As far as I can understand, there is no opposition on this side of the House to the Bill.
Ordered,
That this day, Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten of the clock.—[The Prime Minister.]
Proceedings on Oil in Navigable Waters Bill [Lords] and the Public Service Vehicles (Travel Concessions) Bill (changed from Public Service Vehicles (Contract Carriages and Special Travel Facilities) Bill) exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]
Mr. Crookshank: I beg to move,
That, for the purpose of concluding the Business of Supply for the present Session, Fourteen days shall be substituted for Twenty-six days in paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 16 (Business of Supply).
This is the Motion which was foreshadowed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last Thursday about concluding the Business of Supply before the dissolution. I hope that it will be agreeable to the House.
Question put and agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SUPPLY [11TH ALLOTTED DAY]
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

  CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1955–56
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That a further sum, not exceeding £30, be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the following services connected with Education for the year ending on 31st March, 1956, namely:—

  CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1955–56

  £

  Class IV, Vote 1, Ministry of Education

  10

  Class IV, Vote 14, Public Education, Scotland

  10

  Class IV, Vote 12, Universities and Colleges, &c., Great Britain

  10

  Total

  30

  —[Sir D. Eccles.]

EDUCATION
3.34 p.m.
Miss Alice Bacon: The last education debate we had in the House took place about nine months ago, and on that occasion the supply of buildings and teachers was a leading feature of our discussion. They are still most important and most urgent and I shall say something about them today, although I shall devote the greater part of my speech to how we on this side of the Committee would like to see our education system develop over the next few years.
Since the last debate we have had a change of Minister, and the difference between the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) and the right hon. Gentleman the present Minister of Education might be summed up in this way: that on the few and rare occasions when the right hon. Lady had a crumb to give away, she gave away that crumb as if it were nothing at all; whereas, on the rare occasions when the right hon. Gentleman has had a crumb to give away, he has managed to give it away in the grand manner and has so dressed it up as to give it the appearance of a first-class meal.
Since the right hon. Gentleman became Minister he has issued Circular 283. This

769
circular makes it possible for rural reorganisation to take place, and also makes it possible for local authorities to spend more money on minor capital works. Both of these we pressed for last July in the education debate we had then. Both were long overdue. It is not clear how much money will be spent on these, but what is clear is that the amount is small in relation to the problem confronting us.
I want to say something about new buildings. It is difficult for us on this side of the Committee to assess what is going on, because both Ministers of Education have quoted "starts," "work in progress" or "work completed," according to the picture which they wished to present. I would remind the Committee of an Answer given on 29th March last to a Question put by one of my hon. Friends. It showed that on 1st February, 1953, 986 schools were under construction, that on 1st February, 1954, only 886 schools were under construction, and that on 1st February, 1955, the number under construction had fallen to 786.
On 31st March, in answer to another Question, the right hon. Gentleman said that the number of school places provided by new school building from 1945–55 was 1,348,000 and only 325,700 of these had been started since October, 1951, when the present Government came into office. If we look at the number of new schools, as distinct from the number of places provided, the information given by the Minister on the same day was that from 1945 to 1955 the number of new schools built was 2,395 and that work on only 582 of these had started after October, 1951.
As I have said, it is difficult to get a true picture because of the different things that are quoted—starts, completions and work in progress. The real test is whether or not the size of classes is increasing or decreasing, The greatest cause of dissatisfaction among parents and teachers alike is the size of classes, and particularly has this been so over the last few years in our primary schools and our infant and junior schools.
We have had no figures on this matter since the last Report of the Ministry in June or July last year, but that one showed that the number of pupils per teacher rose steadily over the last three years and that the number of over-large classes had also risen from 1951 to the
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time of the last Report in 1954. It is estimated that 3 million out of the 6 million children in our schools are now being educated in classes which the Ministry itself considers too large, because we have a figure of 40 for primary schools and 30 for secondary schools, although half the children in our schools are in classes which exceed that number.
I have never known why we ever set 40 for primary school and 30 for secondary school classes, as we did in the regulations. I used to be a teacher. For six months of my teaching experience I taught in an infants' school, and during that time I knew what it was like to have to teach a class of 30, 40 or more infants. In anything that is suggested we might consider whether it would not be better to have smaller classes for the smaller children and perhaps slightly larger classes for the older children.
I should like to know whether the Minister can give us figures for the size of classes at the present time. Can he tell us whether the size of classes has been increasing or decreasing during the last year? We would like to know not only the teacher-pupil ratio but also the number of over-large classes that we have today.
The truth is that over the last year or two we have been feeling the effects of Circular 245, which was issued during the first three months of the Conservative Government's term of office and made building cuts. I am sure that if it had not been for that circular the position would have been much better. It is interesting to contrast the feverish activity of the Conservative Government in the last three months before the General Election with the cuts and economies which took place during the first three months of its period of office.
Over the last few years there has been more overcrowding in our primary schools than in our secondary schools. Over the next few years the pattern will change. According to the Minister's own figures, because of the "bulge," which resulted from the increased birth rate, moving out of the primary schools into the secondary schools, he estimates that by the end of 1959 there will be 400,000 fewer infants and juniors but 600,000 more children over 11 years of age in the schools. This means that there ought to be a consider-

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able reduction in the size of classes in primary schools.
However, there are some disquieting reports that some primary schools are being closed because the numbers in them have fallen as a result of the "bulge" population moving from them into the secondary schools, and the children from them are being transferred to other schools. It is altogether wrong that that should be so. The Minister's predecessor took a very strong line in preventing certain grammar schools being closed, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take an equally strong line in preventing primary schools being closed when there is a fall in the number of children in them. I believe that we could now have much smaller classes in primary schools because of the movement of children into the secondary stage.
Because children are moving up from the primary to the secondary stage, it is clear that over the next few years the emphasis will be on the secondary stage and upon the provision of schools for children over 11 years of age, and the building of new secondary schools is a most important matter. It is at this time when we have to provide for so many more children at the secondary stage that a great deal of thought should be given to the form which our secondary education should take. I want to spend a little time discussing the subject.
There has grown up in this country a system which was never planned nor consciously approved, a system of an examination at 10 or 11 years of age and selection into different types of secondary schools, selection which, in most cases, determines the whole future of a child's life. Both sides of the Committee are aware of the defects of the system, such as the harmful effects in the junior schools, the wrong selection which inevitably takes place, and the question of late developers. I would say that it is not always the quick witted at examinations who benefit most from extended education. There are people of all shades of opinion in the country who know that the system is wrong, but where we differ is in how we would put it right. What should we do to deal with the problem?
It is less than a fortnight since I listened to the right hon. Gentleman make a speech to the National Union of
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Teachers, at Scarborough, a speech devoted almost entirely to the problem of the form of our secondary education. I sat on the platform, as did a number of other hon. Members, behind the right hon. Gentleman. I listened very carefully to his speech and have re-read it on several occasions to try to get clear in my mind precisely what he meant. I must confess that it is rather puzzling. For instance, he began by making this assertion:
"Looking ahead, one sees the old distinction fading between the 'either you go to a grammar school' and the 'or you go somewhere else definitely inferior.' This 'either* made for sense in the days when, if you had no private fortune, you lived either by your brains, or by your hands; a pretty sharp distinction."
The right hon. Gentleman went on:
"But now all is mixed up. The professor mends his car and his wife has no maid. Every year that passes more mothers are as expert with their babies as the professional nannies who, when I was in my pram, ebbed and flowed twice a day in Kensington Gardens. … In short, we are all coming closer together, in a sense we are all working-class now, and tomorrow we shall be able to enjoy a share of the culture and leisure which used to be the prerogative of the few."
Apart from the fact that most mothers always looked after their own babies, I believe that this is an argument for mixing the children in our schools and not for segregation.
The right hon. Gentleman said in his speech—there is a summary of it in his own words—that he would like selection for all instead of what he called "selection for none." He says that he will allow local education authorities to provide for a range of only 15 to 25 per cent. for grammar school plus technical school places, that new technical schools will be approved where there is a very strong case, and that modern schools will be encouraged to develop extended courses and to strengthen their links with grammar schools. He says that, otherwise, he does not like transfers at 13, but feels that they should be arranged at 15 or 16, and he also says that comprehensive schools will be approved as an experiment when all the conditions are favourable and no damage is done to any school and no existing schools are swallowed up.
In other words, if the right hon. Gentleman carries out this policy, we shall have two tests, one at 11 and one at 15. As

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I understand his policy, transfers at 13 will be frowned upon and some local education authorities may have to reduce the percentage of children that go to grammar schools. The policy which he outlined at the conference of the National Union of Teachers is infinitely worse than that which we have in operation at the present time.
What do we believe? On this side of the Committee we believe that separation at 11 is wrong. We believe that all children at 11 ought to proceed to one secondary school. They can be called comprehensive schools, but I do not mind admitting that I do not like the word and wish that we could find something else. But. at any rate, it is one secondary school where all the children would find their particular bent within that school.
It has always been a mystery to me as a teacher why this topic has been subject to party political warfare, because I believe that the educational grounds for comprehensive schools are absolutely overwhelming. The right hon. Gentleman, in the same speech at Scarborough, said:
"I am told I am expected to say something about the disreputable argument that comprehensives should be established everywhere because they are likely to breed recruits for one particular party."
That was a statement which was absolutely unworthy. Recently, the Manchester City Council decided to go ahead with comprehensive schools. According to the "Manchester Evening Chronicle" of 7th April, one of the councillors described comprehensive schools as
"Communist policy adopted by the Left wing of the Labour Party."
That must be the first time I have been accused of being on the Left wing of the Labour Party, let alone adopting Communist policy.
However, it is very strange, if this be so, that this is the generally accepted system in the United States of America. I am not advocating their particular kind of school, but I am saying that the education of all children over 11 in the same type of school appears to work in America and in other countries. It is worth while noting that in the United States of America there are fewer private fee-paying schools than we have here. I believe that if we had no examination at 11, no selection at 11, and if parents knew
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that their children could continue their schooling beyond the age of 15 according to their ability and the wishes of their parents, fewer parents would send their children to private fee-paying schools. The benefits of comprehensive schools are enormous. Every child will have a chance and, if not academic, can continue with several suitable courses.
I want to deal with only two of the chief objections that we often hear about these schools. The first is the size. People say that comprehensive schools are not good because they are too big. Comprehensive schools need not be too big. Certainly, some of the existing ones are not. I want to defend the big school. A big school gives children all the advantages. I know that it is said that the headmaster cannot possibly know all the children, and so on, but when I look back to my own school days I do not think of my own headmistress, but of particular class teachers, and I think that that is true of all of us.
It is not so much the size of the school that is important to the child; it is the size of the class that is important. It is much better for a child to be in a big school in a small class than in a small school in a big class. Apart from that, the greatest advantage of a big school is that a big school means a big staff and more specialist teachers with a greater variety of courses from which the children can choose. At Kidbrooke School there is a staff of 80 and that means that the children can choose from many specialist subjects.
A very interesting book called "Comprehensive Schools To-day," has been published recently by the Councils and Education Press Ltd. It was written by Dr. Robin Pedley, who is a lecturer at Leicester University. Dr. Pedley has been to all the comprehensive schools in the country. The book is a survey of what he found. Some of the schools have been improvised and are perhaps not quite so good as some of the newer and bigger ones. At Holyhead, in the Isle of Anglesey, he found:
"The range of subjects from which children can choose their studies far exceeds that available in most grammar schools; in the fifth year English, Welsh, French, German, Latin, history, geography, art, music, woodwork, metalwork, cookery, needlework, commercial subjects, plane and solid geometry, biology, general science; in the sixth form pre-nursing course, physiology, hygiene, science, and other

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complementary subjects; in the arts sixth English, Welsh, French, German, Latin, history, geography, art, music (plus some science …): in the science sixth mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, botany, zoology."
Holyhead Comprehensive School has 1,041 pupils and, as Dr. Pedley asked in his book, how many grammar schools can give the same courses as does the comprehensive school? I do not fear a big school, because it offers great opportunities.
The other criticism of comprehensive schools is that they mean a levelling down and that they keep back a bright boy or girl. If there is one thing that comes out clearly in Dr. Pedley's book, it is that, far from that being the case, far from there being a levelling down, there has been a considerable levelling up. Many children—and he gives the facts and figures—who would not have passed the examination at 11 did exceedingly well afterwards. At the Holyhead School, for example, three State scholarships and nine county major scholarships were gained in 1953, 45 advanced level passes, including four distinctions, were gained by 19 pupils in G.C.E. and 327 ordinary level passes were gained by 101 pupils.
I could give many more quotations from Dr. Pedley's book which prove that in every comprehensive school which he visited the number of children who got the G.C.E. was proportionately much greater than would have been the case—the 20 per cent.—which is normally accepted for grammar schools. I think I have quoted sufficient to show that there is no levelling down in these schools, but a great deal of levelling up.
The right hon. Gentleman has recently said that he differs from the education experts because he sees no prospect of enlarging the grammar school system to meet the needs of the scientific revolution. If he spoke to teachers in secondary modern schools who have been preparing children to take G.C.E. in those schools, he would modify that statement. Comprehensive schools are coming. The list of local authorities which are already building them, or which have built them, is very impressive. The Island of Anglesey is completely comprehensive, so is the Isle of Man. An hon. Member opposite smiles, but he should wait until I have finished my list. Such important authorities as London, the West Riding,
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Staffordshire, Lancashire, Westmorland, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Coventry, Bristol and Stoke-on-Trent have either built or are building comprehensive schools. We believe that with a Labour Government these schools will come more quickly than with a Tory Government.
Do parents like comprehensive schools? I have in my hand a quotation which shows that they welcome them. As I said earlier, Manchester recently decided to go ahead with comprehensive schools on the Wythenshawe estate. The "Manchester Evening Chronicle" sent a reporter to the area where the schools are to be built. On 7th April the paper gave the results of a survey which it had conducted. The reporter asked 100 people this question, "Do you know what is meant by a comprehensive school?" Twenty-eight answered, "No," and 72 answered, "Yes."
Then the reporter, not a member of the Labour Party but a reporter, explained to those 100 people what comprehensive schools were and the idea behind them, and asked, "Having heard a broad outline of what they are, do you favour them?" One hundred people answered "Yes," and nobody answered, "No." [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite may laugh, but this was not a member of the Labour Party or anybody very much in favour of this type of school. It was a journalist from the "Manchester Evening Chronicle" and the result of the survey was published in that paper. These are the schools of the future. We need not have schools all of one type; there can be an infinite variety. We say that it is wrong to have selection at 11 and would like to see a movement towards the elimination of that system.
At the same time as we make it possible for more children to continue at school after the age of 15, we must do more than is being done today about maintenance allowances. For some time now we have been promised a statement by the Minister. Not only are maintenance allowances for boys and girls who remain at school after the age of 15 totally inadequate but the amounts allowed are very patchy in different parts of the country. Some authorities are generous, others are not so generous. We believe that the time has come to have increased maintenance grants on a national scale. There is a good case for

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that national scale to be paid by the Government although administered by the local authority.
I turn to another important subject. There are two important parts of the 1944 Education Act which have not yet been put into operation—the raising of the school-leaving age to 16, and part-time day education for young people between the ages of 15 and 18. A great deal of the money spent on education is spent on the tuition and maintenance of those boys and girls over 15 who are in full-time attendance at schools, colleges and universities. There is some provision for young workers between the ages of 15 and 18, but it is of a voluntary nature, provided by youth clubs and evening classes.
This is all very good, but it is insufficient and it is voluntary. Youth clubs and evening classes touch only a few of our young people over 15. The amount of illiteracy among young people is greatly exaggerated, but we know that for many boys and girls there is a complete break at the age of 15 between school and work, with no further education of any kind.
We have considered the matter very carefully. We believe that more attention must be paid to the well-being and education of these young workers. They are working, they are producing and helping the national income, and they should have a greater share of what is spent on education. We have come to the conclusion that now is the time to start to prepare to put into operation that part of the Education Act which makes provision for the part-time day education of these young workers. The Government should enter into discussions with local education authorities to decide the best way in which to make a start. I stress that in conjunction with this we believe that more money could be expended by the Ministry of Education on playing fields so that young people of this age might enjoy the benefit of the games, and so on, which many of them left behind when they left school.
In all these reforms the teachers are of the utmost importance. We must produce more teachers and we must improve their status. We shall get more teachers through the comprehensive schools and the provision of better maintenance allowances which will encourage more children
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to stay on at school. I hope that today the Minister will give me the statement which he promised he would give me if I put a Question on the Order Paper for next Thursday. I have been questioning him for some time about grants to intending teachers in training colleges. These are! very much below those grants to students in universities.
Better grants to intending teachers will result in a better supply of teachers. Our teachers are undervalued. We must raise their status. This can be done partly by salaries, which, of course, is a job for negotiation; but we must consider now the introduction of a three-year training period rather than a two-year period. All this will cost more money, and we on this side of the Committee believe that the country must afford more money for education. I know that the Minister will quote figures to show that we are spending much more money today, but in "Education" on 8th April, Dr. W. P. Alexander, in his "Week by Week" notes, said:
"There is no great satisfaction from the point of view of educational reform in merely recording an increased expenditure. What is to be noted is that the great part of the increase in the present estimates is not accountable for by reform, but merely by the increasing cost of maintaining the existing service."
It is questionable whether, in real values, we are spending as much per child today as we were before the war. Education expenditure must be reviewed. Local authorities must either be given other sources of revenue or the grant formula must be revised. We would repeal the derating Act. This would give local authorities more money to spend on education. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, we agree on that; we have stated it quite definitely. It is much better that money should go to educating our children than to saving rates for the industrialists. This is a matter which must be discussed in the next year or two.
We desire to preserve the partnership between the Government and the local authorities in this matter. Local authorities are responsible for education but not completely autonomous. We want variety in our educational system. We want to keep our local interests and our local pride, but we believe that the differences between one local education authority and another are still much too

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great. To a large extent geography still determines a child's chance in life.
We believe that the Ministry must use its powers to raise the standards. We on this side of the Committee do not want a national system of education from the Ministry of Education, but we do want a system of education based on national minimum standards.
Mr. Spencer Summers: The hon. Lady made a rather important statement on derating. Would she make it quite clear whether she is advocating the abolition of the derating for agriculture?
Miss Bacon: The hon. Gentleman must await our election manifesto.
To sum up, these are the things which we should like to see. First, a reduction in the size of classes; secondly, more teachers with a longer period of training, and a reasonable status for the teachers; thirdly, real secondary education for all with the abolition of selection at 11; fourthly, a start being made to provide part-time day education for young workers, and the provision of more playing fields; fifthly, the expansion of technical education, which, I understand, is a subject which one of my hon. Friends hopes to develop; sixthly, better maintenance grants and improved grants to intending teachers.
For the past three and a half years, the Conservative Government have done in education only what they have been pushed into doing by this side of the Committee, except, of course, that, just as they are doing something for old-age pensioners and retirement pensioners just before the Election, the right hon. Gentleman has issued Circular 283 a few weeks before the Election. Today, it is more necessary than ever that we should have a really well-educated democracy. Our lives are more complex and the decisions which have to be made are so great that it is necessary that we should see that the people of our country are properly educated. We believe that our policy, and only our policy, can achieve that.
4.13 p.m.
The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): The Government are grateful to the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon) and hon.
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Gentlemen opposite for giving us Has opportunity to review progress in education. We entirely agree with the hon. Lady about its importance; indeed, the more often we can speak about it the better we are pleased.
There is one shadow over this debate. We all miss the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley). Although we have not always agreed with his views, he has been devoted in his attention to the education service and his courage in meeting his present illness has, I think, impressed us all. We are sorry that he is not with us today.
Since the war, the main thing that has happened in education is the expansion in the size of the service. I find it almost impossible to realise how great might have been the improvements in the standards of the service in the same period if there had not been this huge increase in the school population, and if Parliament and the local authorities had been willing to vote the same mounting sums of money for replacing slum schools and for carrying out other objects of the Education Act, 1944.
Suppose that no schools had been blitzed in the war and the number of schoolchildren had not jumped in eight years from 5 million to 6½ million. Just think what a clean sweep we could have made of all the old slum schools and the all-age schools in town and country, not to mention the provision of county colleges, nursery schools and other things of which the hon. Lady spoke. Neither the party opposite nor the Conservative Party have abandoned those necessary reforms.
The fact is that they have been delayed by 10 years through circumstances which the authors of the Education Act could not have foreseen. The result has been, as the Committee knows, that my predecessors at the Ministry of Education have had to put first the expansion in the size of the service to cope with the 1½ million extra children who reached school age between 1947 and 1955.
Hon. Members, naturally, hold different opinions about the speed and success with which the new places and the additional teachers have been found. If my memory serves me right, when in opposition one is dissatisfied with the progress made. When one is on this side of the Committee, Ministers appear, I hope, in a rather more favourable light.

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When we came into office, the school-building programme was greatly overloaded and needed a good deal of sorting out to prevent very long delays in the completion of schools. No one can say exactly how many fewer schools would have been completed if we had not had a moratorium on starting dates. But judging from what I saw when I was at the Ministry of Works, where we had the same difficulties about steel and other things, the moratorium was painful while it lasted; but it did succeed in putting the building programme on an efficient basis.
The hon. Lady asked what has been happening about the size of classes. I will give her the best figures I can because I want to show exactly where we are. In spite of a 30 per cent. growth in the school population and very big movements in the population to the new housing estates in different parts of the country, resulting in an urgent need for new schools, the size of classes has risen from the lowest point by only 3 per cent. There has been a 30 per cent. increase in the school population and today the size of classes is 3 per cent. higher than the best it has been.
Mr. George Thomas: Compared with what best?
Sir D. Eccles: The best year after the war.
Mr. Thomas: What about 1951?
Sir D. Eccles: I shall have to get the exact figure, but the rise since then is certainly less than 3 per cent. I will ask the Parliamentary Secretary to get the figures for the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Ede: It would be interesting if we could have the real figure of the size of classes, because a teacher does not teach on percentages; he teaches a number of boys and girls.
Sir D. Eccles: We have a large number of complicated statistics. I think it would be better if I did not read them out, but sent them to the right hon. Gentleman. He can then have all the information which we have got.
The point I was about to make was this. This was an enormously heavy burden. I found, when I got to the Ministry of Education, that if my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) had not
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really concentrated all her efforts on this building programme, the situation would have been far worse than it is now. When we consider that during my right hon. Friend's time in office the cost of providing secondary school places was reduced, so that we now get 4,000 places for every £1 million pounds spent against 2,800 before we came to office, we can see what would have happened if the post-war expenditure per place had been allowed to continue.
The late Mr. George Tomlinson started the reduction and economies, and I give him every credit for that. But we should have been far better off today if those economies had been put in hand before. As the hon. Lady said, I was able to bring out Circular 283 which relaxed restrictions on school building, but that was because the battle of numbers was within sight of victory. So long as that was not so, building had to be restricted to providing new schools where there was extra population. Now, under Circular 283, we can begin reorganisation in the rural areas, and we can say with confidence that the completion of new schools will no longer be a neck-and-neck race with the rise in the school population.
Year after year from now, the total number of school places will draw ahead of the number of school children. The Committee will, probably, not wish to hear many statistics; but the hon. Lady herself gave the essential figure, which is that in the next five years, infants and juniors will fall by 400,000 and seniors will rise by 600,000, so over the next five years there will be a net increase of 200,000 in the school population. Against this, if we continue to complete only the same number of school places as last year, that is, 200,000 a year, we shall get 1,000,000 new school places in the next five years, against a net increase in the population of 200,000.
Of course, we expect to do substantially better than last year. The cost of the extra building under Circular 283 is already known to be about £10 million for this year. The hon. Lady asked about minor works. The cost of those already known to us is £4 million more than last year. I shall say something more about that in a moment. These programmes will provide a substantial increase in the number of new places under construction in our current building programme.

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I should like to say a word about county councils. Any hon. Member whose local education authority is a county council will find, on inquiry, that the works department is now at full stretch. There may be exceptions but, by and large, these county councils have on hand all the work they can now do. I am encouraging them to put out work to private architects, and they try to do so; but that cannot be done very quickly, and requires some supervision. I think it unrealistic to ask county councils to do more than they are now trying to do under Circular 283.
As further resources become available, and assuming that my right hon. Friends are returned at the Election, we shall push ahead with the replacement of the slum schools and the reorganisation of all-age schools in towns. That will certainly happen within the five years and, again, will yield an addition, as it gets going, to the million new places which one can foresee on the basis of the old programme.
The minor works side is one which interests me very much, because I believe that there are many improvements and extensions which can be done with the freedom to spend £10,000 a job which local authorities never thought of when they did not have that freedom. They are expanding their programmes very well. I do not like to pick out "star performers"—it is perhaps invidious to do so—but I have in mind, as examples, Birmingham, Sheffield and Staffordshire. All three of these authorities have a minor works programme this year which is double, and in one case considerably more than double, what they spent last year.
I pick them out because all three authorities are short of teachers and I think that this big increase in their minor works programme will encourage recruiting. There are many other authorities whose minor works programmes I might mention. The total of minor works has doubled, and I could pick out plenty of Conservative authorities as examples. I am concerned with Birmingham, Sheffield and Staffordshire, particularly because they are so short of teachers.
The Committee will see that even if we did not get more than the million new places in the next five years, there will be a substantial reduction in the size of classes. We have reached the point where
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the expansion in the size of the education service can give way to improvements in the standard. Before long we shall have to consider the fascinating alternatives and the various directions for advance which were put to us by the hon. Lady.
First, ought we to go further in reducing the size of classes? I agree with the hon. Lady that the figure of 40 for the regulation size of primary school classes is a mystery. I have never discovered why the regulation size of secondary school classes should be 10 fewer than that for primary schools. That is one thing we could do as we come to the end of the five years. We could push on and reduce the primary classes still further.
Another thing we could do is to carry out the desire of teachers for a third year of training. I asked the National Advisory Council on the training and supply of teachers to consider the implications of a third-year course. I find, also that many teachers would like to see more supplementary courses and more refresher courses. That is not an alternative to a third year, but it is something to which, if we had the resources, we should turn our attention.
Then there are the county colleges and the nursery schools. We could launch a great programme in those directions. Finally, there are some people who say that before we do anything else, we should raise the school-leaving age. Within five years one or more of these reforms will become a possible starter, and it will require the greatest judgment to decide which of them is in the best interests of the children. I am sure that the Minister, whoever he may be, when making up his mind, will do well to lean heavily on the advice of the teachers themselves and always be vigilant for their professional interests.
As one would expect, and perhaps contrary to the impression given by the hon. Lady, the teachers, and those thinking about being teachers, have seen that the battle of numbers is almost won and that the prospects for their profession are decidedly more interesting. There is no other way in which one can explain the phenomenal rush this year to apply for places in the teachers' training colleges. Clearly, confidence is returning to the teaching profession. I have here some figures.

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Last year, there were just over 1,000 more applications than in 1953. This year, by 1st April, there were already 1,500 more than at the same date in 1954 and, of course, there are many more still to come in before September. To date, we have applications from 11,000 girls for the 8,000 places in the two-year training colleges next September. Not only are they coming in every day, but, for the first time for several years, the Minister of Education is getting letters from parents saying, "Why cannot my child get a place at a training college?"
Mr. Frederick Peart: Who decides?
Sir D. Eccles: I am coming to that.
Here is proof that the attraction of education is increasing. The training colleges will be able to squeeze in a few more this year than last year, but I think it would be quite wrong to overcrowd them. This is a turning point for the teaching profession. The days are now over when anyone who wanted to be a teacher was thankfully accepted. As there is this growing queue, it will be easier to maintain the professional standards of which the teachers in the service are rightly jealous.
I have agreed, also, to special allowances for all teachers of advanced work. That should help to secure for the profession a better share of science and mathematics graduates. It is not a matter of money alone. I am glad to say that I have the co-operation of other Government Departments and of industry. With their help we hope to recruit at least the minimum number of graduates to match the growing sixth forms which we expect in the years ahead. The Committee will realise that not only is the number of children in secondary schools mounting, but also, I am glad to say, the proportion of those who stay on for sixth form work is increasing. Therefore, it is very clear that we have to hurry if we are to get sufficient science and mathematics teachers for these young people, who are so important to us.
I cannot say much today about teachers' pensions. The negotiations started with the Government offer to wipe off the whole of the deficiency on the old account. That was a very generous offer, but it was necessary in order to have a clean slate on which to write our new
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scheme. The Secretary of State for Scotland and I asked the parties to the new scheme to draw up a list of benefits which they think should be considered for inclusion. We are now calculating what would be the cost in contributions of covering those benefits and we shall have to discuss arrangements for meeting variations in the liabilities of the account which will occur from time to time. We are getting on quite well and I had it in mind to conclude this work before the House rose for the Summer Recess.
Mr. W. G. Cove: After the General Election.
Sir D. Eccles: It would be nice to give the teachers all they want, but we are doing a sober, sensible piece of work.
I return to the question of teacher training colleges. The Committee might think that while there are so many applicants there can be no case for looking into the grants for students at those colleges. The Government do not take that view. As the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will understand, as he and I have the pleasure of going racing together at Epsom, it is a very good maxim that when your horse is doing well that is the time to increase the stake. Accordingly, I have some proposals to make. The most important thing is to secure uniformity in the grants made by the L.E.As. to students in teacher training colleges to cover expenses other than fees and board. A working group composed of representatives of teachers, L.E.As. and the Ministry have been considering these arrangements and their report will be published in a few days' time.
The main recommendation is that the grants should be fixed at a uniform rate for the whole country, roughly equal to the best rates now being paid. That is about twice the present average and in some cases two, three, or four times the present grant. They also recommend that the parents' contribution should be assessed on the basis of the same income scale as is to be used in the case of university awards. We must have more consultation with the local authority associations before I can give authority for the introduction of the scheme, but I most sincerely congratulate the group on a very good report and say that I accept the recommendations.

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Mention of the income scale to be applied to parents of students in training brings me to university awards. As hon. Members know, the Act says those awards shall be such that the students can go to university without hardship to themselves or to their parents. I have listened to a great deal of advice on this matter, including some very sensible evidence from the students themselves. It has not been easy to work out modifications which would do justice to students and their parents within reasonable financial limits. The Committee might care to know the main changes which I propose, and which will come into force for State scholarships as from next autumn.
First, the amount allowed for board and lodging in the basic rate is being increased by about 10 per cent. and certain other minor increases will be made to take account of changes since the present rates were fixed.
Secondly, the boy or girl who, in addition to a State scholarship, wins a special prize or award of merit, will be allowed to retain the cash value of the prize without any reduction of the scholarship grant, provided that the prize money is not more than £100 and that it is a single payment. It must not be spread over a number of years.
Mr. M. Turner-Samuels: If it is more than £100 they keep the £100?
Sir D. Eccles: They keep the £100.
The Committee may think the third the most important change—the means test applied to the parents' income will be made less exacting so that in many cases the deductions from the grant will be noticeably smaller. This will be achieved in two ways. First, the scale will be stretched out to bring somewhat higher incomes within the range of the grants; and, secondly, the disregards allowed from the parents' income in respect of additional children and their school fees will be substantially increased.
The 10 per cent. addition to the grant and the easing of the means test, taken together, will help many parents and help very substantially those with large families. Full details will be announced in the next day or two.
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I have been in consultation with the local authority associations in working out these proposals and I hope to have their support in recommending the same scales and rates for adoption by local education authorities for winners of their awards. Uniformity in the basic allowances as between one authority and another is very greatly to be desired, and I have good hopes that we shall achieve it. Certainly, anything that I can do to get uniformity will be done. I most gratefully acknowledge the sympathy with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has treated these proposals. Between us we have worked out changes that will help a great many parents.
The hon. Lady mentioned the problem of early leavers from grammar schools. This is a complex and difficult problem. The trend is good. More boys and girls are staying on each year. The question is how to encourage still more to do so, realising that cash allowances alone will not provide the solution. No Minister of Education can compete with the wages a boy can earn if, at 16, he goes into a factory. We have to find a combination of inducements and I have not finished my survey of the problem. I am discussing it with the local authorities' and teachers' representatives, who are being extremely helpful, but I must have a little more time before I am ready to announce a measure that will have real effect.
I come now to the question of the opportunities of going to grammar or technical schools which are open to children in different areas, especially areas where the provision is low at present. Conditions vary so much that I do not think it possible to lay down any single national percentage. I propose, as the hon. Lady heard me say at Scarborough, a range of from 15 to 25 per cent. of grammar school and technical school places combined. I certainly want every area to reach 15 per cent. and more.
Leaving Rutland on one side, because as the Committee knows, it is an exceptional case, the following authorities are now under 15 per cent.—Gateshead, Dudley, Salford, Northumberland, and Nottingham. In all except one of these areas, plans are in hand to bring the percentage within the 15 to 25 per cent. range. There are about 20 authorities with provision between 15 per cent. and 20 per cent., and, in most of these, new grammar school places are contemplated.

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There is no authority in Wales with less than 20 per cent., and, quite clearly, as the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) would tell me if I did not state it, special consideration will have to be paid to the Welsh authorities.
I have suggested a working maximum of 25 per cent. because I believe in the progress and development of the secondary modern school. I think that this is not only possible, but definitely in the best interests of our children, and here I come to the interesting argument which the hon. Lady addressed to the Committee about the future pattern of secondary education.
Miss Bacon: Will the Minister make it perfectly clear what he intends to do in those cases where the grammar school and technical school places are more than 25 per cent.?
Sir D. Eccles: I do not intend to do anything where they are more than that. I intend only to bring the low ones up to somewhere within the range of 15 and 25 per cent. If an authority now has 30 per cent.—for instance Burton-on-Trent—it will be left where it is, and so will Wales.
The hon. Lady mentioned schools in the United States. Of course, we could try to copy the United States, where I think about three times the proportion of pupils go to universities than is the case here. In that way, of course, they get a much larger number of technically skilled people who have qualifications in one or other of the various subjects than we get, but that is not what I meant when I said that I do not think we can enlarge our grammar school stream. I do not mean that we cannot provide as good an education as can be got in grammar schools elsewhere. What I say is that it would alter the whole character of our universities and grammar schools if we tried to treble them, and that that would meet with very great resistence.
Therefore, it seems to me better to try to build, alongside this grammar school-university stream, many strong and various streams leading from the secondary modern schools to the technical colleges, technological institutes, and all other forms of higher education. That fits in with the very specialised nature of the modern world. I doubt very much whether many schools can really provide the full range of classes and courses which it is quite reasonable for young boys and
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girls today to expect to have the opportunity to follow. Ideally, one would like to see a group of secondary modern schools, each one of which gave a good general education while specialising in something at the top—some subject in which the pupils would specialise before they left.
It is difficult and seldom desirable to try to concentrate too much vocational education in one place, though we may get exceptions. Indeed, there are two exceptions. One is where we have an industry which says, "We have so much engineering here that it would be a good thing to have an engineering technical school." Where there is a very clear need in an industrial area for such a secondary technical school, I will agree to it. The other exception is the one quoted in Dr. Pedley's book: one sees clearly that, where the population is scattered, we are restricted to having a single secondary school that may well be the best we can do for the children in that area.
Where we have a dense population, however, as we usually have in this overcrowded island, then it is possible to have a group of secondary schools within range of any given home. That will provide a choice for parents, and, as the secondary modern school develops, I am convinced, from what I have seen myself already, that some parents will prefer it to any grammar school to which their children might go. Even in my own town of Chippenham, the headmaster of a secondary modern school told me only last week that he had offered a transfer to three bright pupils in his school, and they would not take it. I believe that is happening more and more in the country.
Mr. Arthur Moyle: Would not that be because of sentiment and loyalty to the school rather than educational preference?
Sir D. Eccles: I think not; I think that sentiment and loyalty to the school are proofs that the school is doing well.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: Were both the schools in the same locality?
Sir D. Eccles: Yes, certainly; it is quite a small town.
Hon. Members opposite want to get rid of the 11-plus examination, and we very well understand the reasons. The difference between us is how to get rid

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of it. I do ask them not to try to do it by destroying 1,200 grammar schools and by showing the whole body of teachers and parents that the Labour Party has no confidence in the secondary modern school. [Interruption.] That would be the result of a policy of comprehensive schools. I am sure that the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East and hon. Gentlemen opposite have visited a good many of these schools and must have been struck with the success which some of the secondary modern schools have achieved in so short a time. If we can raise the majority up to the same standard, we shall have a secondary system which will meet the needs of the modern world.
I am not quite sure what the Labour Party really wants comprehensive schools for. The hon. Lady said with much emphasis that it was not politics at all, but it is difficult for us to believe that. I have here a report from "The Times Educational Supplement" of a meeting of the London Labour Party at St. Pancras Town Hall on 26th February last, at which one speaker said:
"Comprehensive schools will help to create a more Socialist attitude."
It does appear to us—
Mr. M. Stewart: Does "The Times Educational Supplement" give the name of the person who is alleged to have made that remark?
Sir D. Eccles: It says that he was a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union; he must have been a delegate, otherwise he would not have got in.
Mr. Peart: Has the Minister also read "The Times Educational Supplement" report on the success of the comprehensive school in Anglesey, which has been justified by the headmaster on educational grounds?
Sir D. Eccles: Of course, I have read it, and I am ready to allow experiments with that type of school. What I very much doubt is whether it would be right to go in for them wholesale. I understand the party opposite to mean, by a comprehensive school, a school to which all the children from a given neighbourhood must go, and only to that school. If that is so, parents' choice is, of course, ruled out. There is only one school to go to.
Miss Bacon: It is ruled out now.
Sir D. Eccles: That is not true, in many cases. It will become less true every year as we develop the secondary modern schools and give parents a wider choice between one school or another, and arrange, as many authorities do, for parents to discuss this choice a year before their children leave the primary schools.
Miss Bacon: If a child does not pass the selective examination, or whatever it is, at the age of 11, and if the parent says, "I desire my child to go to the grammar school," does the Minister suggest that the child will go?
Sir D. Eccles: I say that we should discuss the matter carefully with parents. Secondary modern schools are doing more and more good work at the top. We shall find that many parents will be quite satisfied with the choice that is made. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is the only way by which we can move forward.
What happens if we have comprehensive schools? The party opposite is in a dilemma. If we want the 2,000-pupil comprehensive school, we are up against difficulties of building and staffing which make it an impossible proposition for many years to come. First of all, the buildings are not there. We should have to pull down existing secondary school buildings and sacrifice existing grammar, technical and modern schools, in order to have the monster schools built. Some hon. Members may say "Never mind about the money," but there is still the staffing problem. We can staff one or two monster schools by taking care to pick out the best people and send them there, and by sending good administrators from the local educational authority as well as teachers. But we cannot repeat that often, any more than we can repeat Manchester Grammar School.
There are large schools which are exceptions to the rule, but when I said to the teachers at Scarborough that there were great disadvantages in having too large a school they welcomed that remark more than anything else which I said. They told me so afterwards.
Miss Bacon: The-right hon. Gentleman missed the point at Scarborough. He did not mention big schools. He said, "In industry we are working towards smaller units." It was at that point that the conference applauded. They were meaning small classes.
Sir D. Eccles: The hon. Lady is completely wrong, and I could produce evidence.
I see a great many teachers and their representatives, and they are, by and large, against monster schools. Suppose we tried comprehensive schools of 500 or 600 pupils in the existing buildings. The hon. Lady told us that it was possible in a school of that kind to give a variety of courses, and also develop a strong sixth form. That just is not so. I leave that point to the teachers to judge for themselves.
If they had to take 500 pupils from a given neighbourhood without any 11-plus exam, could they or could they not develop a strong sixth form? The answer is that they could not do it, and they know it. It is best to leave this matter to the teachers themselves, in whose judgment I am quite confident on this whole issue of comprehensive schools.
I have taken a long time. The hon. Lady asked another question, which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will be ready to answer.
Mr. James Johnson: The Minister has several times used the abjective "monster." What does he mean by the "monster" school? He mentioned 500. What does he think is the optimum size?
Sir D. Eccles: By "monster" I mean the 2,000-pupil school, which is the figure I used before.
The Parliamentary Secretary will say something about educationally sub-normal and handicapped children, to whose care he devotes a great deal of his time. He will also refer to the Ashby Report.
I imagine that every Minister of Education becomes fascinated with his job, and is very prone to exaggerate its importance. But can one exaggerate the importance of the work which the next decade will put upon the Ministry of Education, the local authorities and the teachers? We all see that the scientific revolution cannot be stopped. The call will be irresistible for more and more skilled manpower at all levels. The rising standard of life and our position as a great Power depend upon meeting this demand, and the main burden will have to be carried by the maintained primary and secondary schools.
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Getting richer is not enough, however. The three partners in education will have to strive harder than ever before, not only to teach the new vocations, but to implant the old virtues of the British character. There is no inevitable conflict between technical education and good behaviour.
"Nihil utile nisi quod honestum."
That is what Cicero said 2,000 years ago. It remains our aim to teach our children both to know more and to do better than their fathers.
4.58 p.m.
Mr. Michael Stewart: I concur with the right hon. Gentleman in regretting the absence from this debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley); perhaps I might rather say "our hon. Friend." I possibly regret it even more than the Minister, because we are not to hear his comments on certain aspects of the Minister's speech.
The right hon. Gentleman said that in the years since the war we had been faced mainly with the mere size of the educational problem, and he speculated what improvement in standards might have been made had we not had an evergrowing problem of size to contend with. He seemed to under-estimate some of the improvements in standards that we have made, like the raising of the school-leaving age, the growing proportion of children staying on beyond the statutory age, and the larger proportion of our children who are able to go to a university. These represent remarkable improvements in standards, achieved at a time of very great difficulty in the years immediately after the war. There has certainly been the very pressing problem of numbers, which has weighed on the right hon. Gentleman, as upon his predecessor and upon the Labour Government.
Our disquiet on that aspect of the matter can be easily stated, without any rehearsal of a long list of figures. It arises from a simple fact. If we take such a yardstick of general progress as the pupil-teacher ratio. we find that in the period shortly after the advent to power of the present Government the figure was showing improvement. It has now begun to move slightly in the opposite direction.
If we take another yardstick of general progress—the proportion of our children

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who are being taught in classes above the alleged maxima of 30 and 40—that figure again was showing some improvement immediately prior to the advent to power of this Government. It is now moving—not very rapidly but unmistakably—in the wrong direction. I know that there are many ways in which one can measure general progress, such as the simple basis of size of classes and relation of pupils to teachers; the significant thing is that whatever yardstick one takes the present Government have, on the whole, lost ground rather than gained it. I will not put it higher than that, but in a period when the Government have had a great deal of economic good luck we really should have been continuing to gain ground, as we were before they took office.
I shall not labour that point except to say this—and it can perhaps be the epitaph on the unhappy Circular No. 245. The argument has been advanced that it was that circular that made it possible to complete a large number of schools which would otherwise have been left unfinished, but from the figures shown in the Monthly Digest of Statistics it can be seen that there is a close relationship between the number of completed school buildings in any one year and the number begun two years previously. That relationship is as close now as when the Government came into power. The general average period for completing buildings is still about two years. In the main, the alleged moratorium has not speeded up building.
What has it done? The figures show quite clearly that we generally see the result of building policy two years after its inception. What are the figures which the Minister so proudly, and perhaps rather innocently, displayed at the N.U.T. conference at Scarborough? They show that in the first two years of office of this Government, when they reaped the harvest others had sown, the number of school places went triumphantly up. But in 1953 the figure was 257,000 and in 1954, 212,000. The net effect of the first act of this Government's educational policy was to cause the number of school places provided this year to about 40,000 less than they otherwise would have been.
The right hon. Gentleman also warned us that his slightly more generous policy
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might be limited in its application by a bottleneck in the architects' departments of certain education authorities. When the Government embarked on the policy outlined in Circular No. 245 we warned them that one result might be a diminution in the staffs of architects' departments of local education authorities. We said that if they then pursued that policy they might, when they tried to reverse it later, be faced with just that difficulty. What the Minister has now said appears prima facie to have justified the criticism that was made then.
Commander J. W. Maitland: Has the hon. Member any evidence for that assumption? Has he been in consultation with any of the local authorities, and have they told him that as a fact? It is quite contrary to what I understand.
Mr. Stewart: Apprehension that that would happen was expressed by some of the witnesses before the Select Committee on Estimates. The Minister says that this may limit progress now. I am drawing what appears to be a reasonable inference from those pieces of evidence.
This struggle with numbers and size of classes is not just a matter of school building. It is, as the Minister rightly and fully realises, even more a question of the supply of teachers. We rejoice with him over the improvement that has so far been registered in that field, though I thought that he was inclined to be somewhat over-optimistic about it. I share the bewilderment which has been expressed on both sides of the Committee as to why one should conclude that a larger class is possible in the primary schools than in secondary schools. Let us not set our objectives too high, however, but consider what we should do to reach these maxima of classes of not more than 30 and 40 children.
In order to do that, and to meet the requirements caused by the further increase in the number of children during the next four or five years, we shall probably have to increase the present number of teachers by 50 per cent. It may be possible to do that. It may be that the increase, which the Minister very naturally welcomes, will continue in future but, of course, we cannot be certain of that. To some extent it is the result of the

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increased opportunities for secondary education of the appropriate kind that began to appear immediately after the war. We are already beginning to feel some of the results of that, but we shall have to seek to increase our supply of teachers more rapidly than we are doing now.
That is only part of the general problem of increasing the supply of people well trained for all occupations—well-trained people of good general education. I shall refer later to the problem of getting that increased supply of well-trained people in a great variety of occupations.
The Minister will correct me if I am misrepresenting him, but I think he suggested a little while ago that it would be desirable for industry and commerce not to try to outbid the teaching profession in its rewards to suitable people. I cannot regard it as altogether fortunate that the Minister of Education, of all people, should have been suggesting a course of action which might limit the rewards available to well-educated people. I doubt if that is the right approach. He has to see the supply of teachers as part of the problem of greatly increasing our supply of well-trained people with a good general education.
Before dealing with the question of meeting that need, I should like to make one further general reflection. I have already suggested that, even when one sets the somewhat more benign or less severe policy of the present Minister against that of his predecessor, the utmost one can say is that the Government have lost some ground and now have some hope that they may be able to catch up. There is really very much more than that to be done. Beyond the subject of size of classes, we have to study the possibility of the development of the county college and of further education.
For many years one of the most serious criticisms to be made of education here has been that one often saw children in their last year at school full of interest and with a genuine love of knowledge. When one met the same persons after they had been out at work two or three years the whole range of their interest appeared to have shrunk and contracted. Somehow or other, in the case of those who left school earlier, much of what had been done at school was lost or had
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withered. The development of the county college may deliver us from that evil in future.
We have also to consider the bringing into force of Part III of the Education Act and the very proper closing of a number of very unsatisfactory schools. There is also the provision of proper education for children who may be affected if, under Part III of the Act, anything like reasonable standards are to be required from some of the private schools. We have to consider a large expansion in the field of technical education, and we have to try to improve the quality of our school buildings.
So while we have had from the Government a step backward and then the promise of a modest step forward, what we really need from any Government that takes education seriously is a rapid onward march. This will mean having a Minister of Education who is prepared to speak boldly in the Cabinet for the needs of his Department. Here may I say that the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor have something to thank hon. Members on this side of the Committee for in that the Minister has a seat in the Cabinet at all. The right hon. Gentleman will have to emphasise to his colleagues that, in order to put education where it needs to be, the expenditure on it has to be expanded a good deal more than is envisaged, and that a substantial reform of local government finance will be necessary if that burden is to be met by the local authorities.
There are a variety of ways of reforming local government finance. All I am saying, as one specially interested in education, is that I do not believe that in the present set-up of local government finance we can get the educational advance which the country needs unless the matter is considered scientifically by people who understand local government. And unless that is done in time, what events will enforce on us is some hurried, makeshift solution which ultimately will not gratify anybody. So it will be important for the Minister to take counsel with his colleague at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to secure a reform of that kind.
I was speaking of the supply in general of well-trained people with a good general education. In this connection I would say that for my own part, and probably

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I speak for some of my hon. Friends, I listened with gratification to what the Minister said about the grants for university students and for students at training colleges. The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that we shall want to read what he has said and to hear the further details to which he referred before commenting on the matter more fully than I have done so far. However, it certainly appeared to us that it was a move in the right direction.
I want to develop for a moment the view which I hold that this country can and ought to seek to have a much greater proportion of its people enjoying both a good vocational training for some trade or profession in addition to a good general education—what used to be, and is, rightly called a liberal education. We know that in almost everything that we try to do we are held up much more by the lack of a sufficient supply of the right people than by the lack of supply of materials.
It is not easy to build enough hospitals, but it is much easier to do that than to increase at short notice the supply of doctors or nurses. It is not easy to provide the requisite number of school places, but it may be easier to do that than to increase proportionately the number of well-qualified teachers. We can build more laboratories and new factories, but it is not equally easy to increase proportionately the number of competent scientists and competent technicians.
This country must try to do that, and it must not only have more people capable of following the skilled trades and learned professions, but it must see that those people not only know their own craft but understand its relation to the public welfare. We want to be sure that our teachers are not only interested in the technique of class work but in the entire problem of public education. We want doctors who are not only interested in individual patients and illness but who have some appreciation of the part that medicine can play in promoting public health generally.
We want lawyers. I am not sure that I would carry the Committee with me if I said that we want more lawyers, but certainly we want lawyers who are interested not only in litigation but in justice. We want skilled workers who are interested not only in their own position in their own industry but in the organisa-
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tion of that industry as a whole and the contribution it makes to the economy of the nation.
These things are necessary because of the constant economic difficulty in which this country stands and probably will stand for several decades to come. There will not only be a need for more trained talent; it will be necessary for these trained people to have a keen sense of the public welfare. If we are to achieve that, the pattern of secondary education will be of great importance, and it is clear that the Minister has signally failed to understand what we were about when we were talking of comprehensive schools.
I cannot help feeling that if the Minister had been among the 100 persons inquired into by the reporter, he would have had to be classified among the 28 who were not sure about the meaning of the term. Because there is one problem which the opponents of the comprehensive school have never faced. It is this: if we do not have the comprehensive school, we must have some process of selection, and not merely selection to determine what subjects a child should learn or what class he or she should be in. For selection in that sense there is a good deal to be said, but everyone who has studied the problem knows that selection, usually irrevocable, to determine what school the child shall be in, the surroundings of its life, at the age of 11, is too early.
How are we to get rid of that difficulty? The Minister said that he disagreed with our method, but the educational policy which he subsequently outlined was based inevitably on an acceptance of that usually irrevocable selection at 11 by methods the validity of which is becoming more and more open to question with every new educational discovery.
The other problem which the opponents of the comprehensive school have not solved is the following. If the Committee accepts the general thesis which I was putting forward just now, that we want well-trained people who have a sense of the relation of their work to the community and a regard for the public welfare, it is not desirable to separate, at the age of 11, the academic pupils, the technicians, and the children who, for one reason or another, are considered to be less gifted—and not always rightly so considered. That is not the way to make

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the kind of society which will have the social cohesion that Britain will need to surmount its economic difficulties.
I am sure that the attempt of the Minister to rivet this apartheid policy more rigidly on the nation by his formula of 15 to 25 per cent. grammar and technical school places is not a happy contribution to educational thought. There is no scientific or educational justification for the assumption that 25 per cent. is anywhere near the limit of people who ought to be getting either what we call grammar or what we call technical school education. If we set a limit like that, we shall find ourselves in due course increasingly short of well-trained people with a good general education.
The talent is there. One of the most exciting things about intelligence tests is that those people who have practised them most have now quite honestly and properly begun to produce evidence which would appear to tell against their own case, namely, that given the right training, environment and encouragement, the thing—whatever it is—that is measured by an intelligence test increases and improves. It is not, as was sometimes supposed, an innate, static, immovable thing.
That means that there are, among those of our children who are now not regarded as good enough for either a grammar or a technical school education, a great many who, given the right encouragement, would benefit from that kind of course. One of the great merits of the comprehensive school is that, put in a school where that kind of work is done, such children begin to wake up to possibilities which, in the modern school—however well organised it may be and however devoted its teachers are—are usually not there because the facilities are not available.
I do not decry the excellent work done by many modern schools, but I say that neither the modern school nor the grammar school is as good as a really good secondary school can be, if we can once get rid of this artificial selection and undesirable division of people into two types at too early an age. The vision that should inspire our educational system is not only one of a steady advance quantitatively, as I mentioned in the earlier part of my speech, but also
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one of a society trying to ensure that all its people have a good general education, and that a much higher proportion of them get a more advanced general and vocational education than is now the case. That is what we need, and that is what will conduce far more to the nation's happiness.
I conclude by paraphrasing a passage from a book which was frequently mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon), who made an interesting, informative, and powerful speech. That book contains an essay by Mr. Harold Shearman, the Vice-Chairman of the Education Committee of the London County Council. He says, in effect, "We must remember that education is an art, and success in the practice of an art depends on the quality of the artist's vision. The vision of those whose aim it is to try to seek by ever more ingenious processes to pick out the cleverest children in order to separate them from their fellows does not seem to be a particularly admirable vision. More admirable, more appropriate to our needs, is the vision of a school which will provide for all a good general education, for those who can profit by it an advanced professional and vocational training, and for all the advantage of living in a school which is something like the real world in which they will have to live, and a school in which they can get to understand their fellows. There are great difficulties in organising such a school well, but surely a genuine effort to overcome those difficulties in pursuit of a worth-while object is something which can evoke the kind of leadership of which the democratic world most particularly stands in need at the present time."
5.23 p.m.
Sir Hugh Linstead: I do not wish to follow the argument of the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), but I accept most warmly one remark which he made before he came to his peroration, namely, the necessity for us to produce, through our secondary schools, the technically trained and educated people which our highly scientific civilisation of today needs, and also his warning that we must see that those people are something more than merely experts in their own techniques—that they must be persons with an all-

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round education. My right hon. Friend gave voice to the same thought when he reminded us that the scientific revolution which is going on around us cannot be stopped, and that if this country is to maintain its position in the world it must be in the forefront of technological advance.
I want to refer to our need for technologists in industry and our need for better facilities for training. Hon. Members will probably be aware that this is a subject which has been studied by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, which has produced a Report upon it. In that Report a comparison is made between the employment of technologists in industry in the United States of America and their employment in this country. In proportion to its population, the United States finds it desirable and necessary to employ in industry about three times the number of the most highly trained and skilled technologists that we do.
Mr. M. Follick: That is about the ratio of populations.
Sir H. Linstead: That ratio makes allowances for the population of the United States, which is three times that of this country. Even having made that allowance, the proportion of technologists employed in industry in the United States is three times the number employed here. In other words, it is nine times as great numerically. The shortage of technologists in industry in this country is generally recognised, and the remedying of that shortage has been accepted by my right hon. Friend as one of the aims of his educational policy.
I suspect, however, that a good many of the misunderstandings which have arisen about the way in which we ought to produce more technologists is due to a confusion in nomenclature. I should like to make a very clear distinction between what industrialists have told me they need in the way of technologists and what we normally call technicians. The technologist as required by industry today is the man who understands and employs in his work the fundamental scientific theories and knowledge that underlie the particular technology in which he is engaged. He is the man who can do the basic research upon which development
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depends and who can tackle new problems. At the moment our educational system is not making the necessary provision for him.
The technician, on the other hand, is usually the highly skilled man who applies existing techniques; who may be responsible for minor developments of existing processes, but does not usually invent new ones. At the moment our technical colleges make adequate provision for him. Both types are needed, but it is the technologist—the man at the level of the university graduate—who is needed most by industry today.
Not many months ago the Government announced their new policy for higher technological education. That policy included a massive development of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in South Kensington, the devotion of substantial extra sums of money, through the University Grants Committee, to universities and to a few selected major colleges of technology, and the development of about 30 technical colleges under the Ministry of Education.
This is a very massive and encouraging development, but the development of 30 technical colleges implies some confusion between the technician and the technologist, and a misunderstanding of the real needs of industry, at any rate as they have been represented to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. At the moment, the person whom industrialists apparently find to be in short supply is the scientifically trained man who. at 18-plus, has taken at least a three-year, full-time course, or its equivalent in part-time education. By and large, what they need is the man with a university degree or its equivalent, either having taken it directly from school or having taken it in what is sometimes called the hard way by interposing periods in industry with periods of study.
Under the Government's scheme, it would appear that the full-time technological student will be catered for, but where there seems to be inadequacy, in the light of the development of the 30 technical colleges, is that the scheme will not provide adequately for the man who is coming up the hard way and who wants to get his professional diploma or university degree over a number of years, interspersed with periods in the factory.

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Had the Government concentrated their development on a smaller number of colleges than 30, they could have raised a certain number of colleges to the level which is now needed to turn out the technological expert, but by spreading the available research over as many as 30 colleges the danger is that none of them will be raised to the level to which it is vitally necessary for industry that they should be raised at the earliest possible moment.
It is a question of staff, of accommodation, and of equipment, largely in technological and scientific subjects which require a great deal of money. There seems to be no likelihood of 30 colleges being available for such a development. If that is true, it will be a tragedy for the part-time man, because he has an important place to fill in industry. In fact, at the top scientific level in industry both the straightforward university graduate who has come up from school and the technologist who has come up the hard way have an equally important place to fill. One would have hoped that development would be provided equally for the one as for the other.
I have felt that the National Advisory Council on Education for Industry and Commerce, which has been advising my right hon. Friend on this question, has itself perhaps been somewhat confused as to its objective. The Advisory Council has proposed to the Minister three lines of development. One was a new national award in technology in certain technical subjects, to be granted to students who have attended approved courses in technical colleges—not in approved technical colleges, but approved courses in technical colleges.
Mr. Follick: The hon. Member refers to technology as a whole. Does he not sub-divide technology into scientific technology and industrial technology?
Sir H. Linstead: What I am trying to do is to report the views which have been expressed by extremely competent and knowledgeable industrialists about our needs. The type of man for whom they are looking is the type who, I think, would be better described as the scientific technologist. They want the man who has had a complete scientific background before he begins to specialise in the particular technology which will be his life work.
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The question about which I am a little critical is whether the advice given to my right hon. Friend by the National Advisory Council will really meet the present demand from industry. The weakness is likely to be found in the recommendation that a national award should be given on the work in approved courses, as distinct from recognition of an institution as a unit.
The third proposal of the National Advisory Council was that a system of internal examinations should be established for this award. It seems to me wholly admirable that the teachers, assisted by external experts, should be the persons to give the award of a diploma. Nevertheless, the most unsatisfactory feature of the proposal rests on the question of a course. I cannot see how an approved course can ever guarantee that the men who take it will have all the background available—libraries, playing fields, common rooms, debating societies and the rest—which the man taking the full-time course in a university or in a college of higher technological education would be able to enjoy.
By developing courses in 30 colleges we are likely to produce the man who is expert up to a certain level in his own technique but lacking the very thing that industry today says it wants: that is, the man with the all-round educational background and the broad scientific experience. I am a little afraid that the national award which has been suggested will become a screen to cloak inequalities between one college and another. If it does so, it will be a tragedy.
I do not see that a new national award is needed for the full-time man who has diplomas and degrees galore available for him. If it is to be primarily for the part-timer, the man who comes up the hard way, it would be rather letting him down and he would be presented with a piece of paper which would not be acceptable to would-be employers, who would want to look behind it and discover whether the man had had a broad general education or only a highly specialised education.
I should not wish to conclude my remarks without referring to the admirable report which my right hon. Friend the Minister made to us about the development of the secondary modern school, with technical work added to the

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ordinary modern subjects, and to his suggestion that in many of the grammar schools a certain amount of technical work can be introduced. It seems to me that by enabling the grammar school boy, as much as any other boy or girl, to use and train his hands we shall be putting the technically-minded boy on the right road; we shall be breaking down some of the prejudice against science as an educational training, and we shall be helping to produce more science teachers, who today are bady needed, and the problem of selecting the right school for the right boy will be somewhat eased.
My general feeling about the Government's proposals for developing scientific and technological education, therefore, is that at the top and at the bottom the Government are proposing something that is wholly admirable—the development through the secondary schools, on the one side, and the development through the universities and through the major technical colleges, on the other side. Where the framework seems to me to be weak, and where, I hope, my right hon. Friend will be able to look at it again, is in the provision for partially upgrading 30 technical colleges.
By doing that my right hon. Friend will not be giving industry what it wants, and he will be in danger of not making a fair and full provision for the science and technical man who comes up the hard way, the man whom industry wants at the very top but for whose training something better than an approved course is needed, and for whose training a few more major technical colleges developed to university level are essential. I express the hope most strongly that my right hon. Friend can have another look at that aspect of the recommendations of the National Advisory Council.
5.40 p.m.
Mr. Frederick Peart: I should like to deal very briefly with the subject raised by the hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead). I believe technical education to be fundamental to the development of our economy. Indeed, the Minister himself said we were living in a scientific revolution. I think that was how he put it. I was rather sorry he did not in his speech lay greater emphasis on the needs of technical education.
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I remember that when in July last year we had a debate on education I put several questions to the then Minister of Education on this subject, but answers were not given. I am not blaming the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) for that. She had to answer many questions asked in that debate, and she did apologise for not having time to answer the questions which I put to her specifically on technical education. I want to put many of those questions again to the present Minister. I should like him to be much more precise on this subject of technical education. He made a skilful debating speech, but as yet we have not had anything concrete on this matter.
I want to refresh the Minister's memory. In July, 1953, we had the excellent Report of the Select Committee on Estimates on Technical Education. It was the Select Committee's Twelfth Report. I want to know what the Government are going to do about the recommendations which were presented to the House by the Select Committee. Time and time again I put some of these questions to the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, and I wish for answers today. The Select Committee recommended, for example, in paragraph 33:
"The Ministry of Education should reexamine the problem of the method of building in instalments with a view to eliminating to the maximum extent the financial loss involved."
I know that the Ministry, in an annex to the Report, put forward its own proposals, but I believe that they were inadequate, and I should like to know what the Minister is going to do about that recommendation.
I should like to know what he is going to do about the second recommendation:
"The Ministry of Education should consider the suggestion that money for building technical colleges should be allocated to local authorities on a five-year basis."
I should like a precise reply.
I would remind the Minister of the financial details given in the excellent Report. On page 11 there are various estimates for building over the years. It stated that the estimated investment of £50 million was the amount which in 1949 it was reckoned would have to be spent for the country to claim that it had
"… minimum facilities for technical education."

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Increases in the prices of building materials must affect that estimate, and even in 1953, the Report stated, that figure had increased to £75 million, and we were spending then, on the average, on building work £1½ million a year.
It is rather shocking that technical education should be neglected to such an extent, and we should have in the programme for this year and next year, and in the five years and the 10 years to come, a much greater allocation not only of financial resources but of physical resources for the extensions required at our various technological colleges.
Sir D. Eccles: The hon. Gentleman may be glad to know that the provision for building for technical education this year is up from £4½ million to £7½ million. I am much impressed by the requests coming in from authorities for the 1956 to 1957 programme, and I shall have to consider them, but if we carry on with the £7½ million a year we shall do more than we did before. I should like to do better still.
Mr. Peart: I accept that this year there will be an increase of £3 million, but, in view of the increased costs of building, I still think that the figure is inadequate. I am not blaming the Minister, but I believe that if we are to give technical education, the higher technological education mentioned by the hon. Member for Putney, greater priority, we must think of spending far more than just over £7 million.
After all, this is the key to our industrial survival. If we are to get the necessary technicians and technologists for our new industries and for the various new developments in other industries, for atomic energy, for example, for the new developments in the coal industry, for new techniques in other industries, we must lay greater emphasis on technical education and provide a greater allocation of money for it. I hope, therefore, that the Minister himself will regard this figure as insufficient. Even though there is an increase this year in the expenditure, we must have at the Ministry of Education more imagination in the approach to technical education. I would hope that when a Labour Minister of Education comes in he, too, will give much greater provision for technical education, and I hope that in our time of power, which we shall achieve, we shall
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see to it that technical education is adequately provided for.
I should like to ask a question or two about grants and the application of Circular 255. I understand that already in the last year 500 courses have been approved in 24 colleges and that the grants are running at £1¼ million. Will there be any increase in this direction? Will some of those restrictions which are imposed on technical colleges in relation to grants covered by Circular 255 be altered? I understand that teachers in the various colleges have made approaches on the matter through their national association. I should like to know whether the grant increase for individual students will cover students in technical education. Shall we encourage more boys from industry through grants which, for example, are given by the National Coal Board?
I want to know, too, whether the Minister has any views on the status of our various technical colleges. I know that the teachers in those colleges feel very strongly on this matter. Over and over again they have put forward their views, advocating a kind of board which would be able to see that adequate academic standards were reached. One of my hon. Friends reminds me that they have suggested a royal society which would have power to lay down professional standards and academic standards. Can we have a definite statement from the Minister? I am certain that the people in technical education, especially in our technical colleges, are anxious to know the policy of the Government on this matter. Can we have a statement today about it? There has been great uncertainty about this matter all over the country.
The Minister mentioned the need to develop technical education at the lower level, and that was taken up by the hon. Member for Putney. I accept that. Indeed, the Percy Committee's Report in 1945 envisaged the development of secondary technical education, but—let us be frank—there has not been that development. Therefore, we must have a better lead from the Government in that direction. In the previous debate I stressed what was mentioned today by the hon. Member for Putney, that we should have greater emphasis on technical education even in our grammar schools. There we

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need more laboratories and more practical work. In many of our grammar schools the emphasis has been on pure science and we now need a shift over to applied science.
I should like to see more students going to the technical colleges from the grammar schools. I should like to know the figures for this year and to have some information about the present tendency. Unless we have recruits from the best boys to our technical colleges, we shall not have the teachers who are essential in the general field and who are required not only in the grammar schools but also in the secondary modern schools, and, I hope, in our new comprehensive schools. I hope that we shall have from the Minister figures showing the trends. At one period in our post-war history there was a dangerous drift. Many of our potential science teachers were going into industry, to the detriment of the teaching profession. It is important that we should have a balance, because there must be a link between the teaching side and the industry, the two serving each other.
I should like to know what progress has been made in connection with the Imperial College of Science. The Government decided to reject the concept of a separate higher technological institution. I accepted that policy. I believed that it was right to extend the facilities of the Imperial College for teaching higher technology. I should like to know whether the programme which was laid down by the Government is being fulfilled.
This is the last debate of this Session on education, and it would be wrong of me to occupy too much time when other hon. Members wish to speak. I have tried to put my speech in the form of questions to the Minister, and I hope that he will give the answers; but there is one debating point. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman put up an Aunt Sally when he spoke of the "monster" comprehensive schools now in existence. The Minister knows that London has had a special problem in its approach to comprehensive education, but, despite the difficulties with which London has been faced, I am sure that one day the nation will be proud of its Kidbrookes.
These schools are very fine schools. I have seen one and I hope to visit another when it has been operating for five years.
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We should have faith and belief in the success of these schools which have been started by London County Council. Other authorities have also started comprehensive schools. There has been the Anglesey experiment, the experiment in Yorkshire and the experiment which has been so successful in Scotland. I have faith in the comprehensive school because I am certain that it is the only way in which one can provide a real, effective, secondary education which will draw out from the child all its talents and abilities.
The Minister chided us about our approach to grammar schools. We have never said that we want to destroy grammar school education. We want to increase the facilities for grammar school education which can be given in comprehensive schools. I was a grammar school master before I went into the Army and later came to the House of Commons, and I recognise that our grammar schools have done a wonderful job.
It is all very well for the Minister to talk about faith in the secondary modern school. I would believe the Tory Party's faith in these schools if hon. Members opposite showed a personal example by sending their sons and daughters to them. I accept the challenge that that also applies to some of my hon. Friends. The vast majority of the sons and daughters of hon. and right hon. Members opposite go to the expensive private and public school section of our educational system. If hon. and right hon. Members opposite have faith in our secondary modern school system they should set an example by sending their children to them. The words used by the Minister about the comprehensive school were not really educational arguments but political arguments, which we know London Tories have used in their campaign of prejudice against London County Council.
In the end, we can only have a good educational system, providing opportunities for our children, if we have not just a supply of good buildings, not just a reorganisation of our secondary modern system, and not just a supply of good teachers, but only if we have a faith and belief in a democratic State system of education. For that reason I sincerely suspect the policies and views of right hon. Members opposite, because I know that fundamentally they believe in an educational system for an élite.
5.56 p.m.
Commander J. W. Maitland: Except for his last few hectic minutes, it was remarkable how the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead). Yet it was perhaps not so remarkable. Surely that is what nearly always happens in our debates on education. It is rightly so, because the Education Act, upon the basis of which we have been working for many years, was the tremendous conjoint effort of the two political parties towards the end of the war. It is right that we should criticise the Minister if we so wish, but it is quite wrong that we should treat education in a party spirit, even though that may be understandable just before a General Election. I may do so myself before I finish, but it is probably not a very wise thing to do.
I should like to congratulate the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon) upon her promotion to be crown princess of education in her party. I will not go further than that now. Although one day she may sit on the Government Front Bench and speak from the Dispatch Box when her party is next in power, I sincerely hope and believe that that day may be quite a considerable way off yet.
At least three-quarters of the hon. Lady's speech was devoted to the comprehensive school. I remember speaking, either before or after her, on this subject in the 1945 Parliament and saying that I agreed with the principle of the comprehensive school. I believe that the comprehensive school is one of the tools to our hand in putting through our educational policy; but it is absolutely wrong to tie ourselves to a rigid doctrinaire attitude about it, as, I must frankly say, the hon. Lady's party appears to do.
I believe that there are many places in our educational system where the comprehensive school could be used, but to say that it can be used throughout, as it were comprehensively, is quite wrong. To abolish all the various existing schools, which would have to be done, to face the enormous expense of turning over to that system, and to slap the face and stop the advance of the existing secondary school is surely a completely unrealistic approach. That is why I do not agree with the hon. Lady's attitude in placing
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the comprehensive school first, foremost and almost all the time.
The hon. Lady said one thing in criticism of the present Government which interested me. She asked about the cuts and why we had made them when we came to power. We made them for exactly the same reason as the previous Government made the cuts before they went out of office—because we were involved in their financial crisis at the time. As she knows very well, there were a series of cuts in education during the time her party were in power. So all these things, which we all agree are desirable and necessary and which we want as soon as possible, are surely in the long run utterly dependent on finance; and the reason we are going ahead now is that this country is in a far better financial position than it has been for a long time. That is why I think it is a very good thing to have businessmen, like my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education, in the Cabinet.
I should like, in passing, to refer to one small point which I think is important. It has to do with one of the many rather platitudinous things about which we are all agreed, which was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), who talked about a good general education and a vocational education going together. I am sure he is right. I have no use for education snobs who say that it is not necessary or that there should not be any vocational element in our education. It is essential that there should be.
But this is the point to which I wish to draw the Minister's attention. Quite recently from two very good sources I have heard things which have made me anxious relating to the over-high standards which are being demanded by the universities for entrance to the science course. It means, in fact, that if children are to have any hope of taking these courses and getting into the universities they have got to specialise far too soon. That is a problem which is in the Minister of Education's sphere, and I should like to draw his attention to it. It is happening at the moment in the scientific field. I do not think there is any doubt about it.
Now I want to turn for a few moments to a very special point, which might be regarded as a small one, but which none the less is something I believe to be im-

815
portant, and that is the way we are treating the children of the officers and men in the Services who have to go abroad or who get moved from station to station. The situation is that the parents of children who have to serve abroad are faced with a difficult problem. They may have an aunt or a sister with whom they can leave the children while they are being educated. But all of us who have families know that that may not be the right thing to do. It might be much better if the child went to a boarding school. Because it obviously happens in certain parts of this country, like the eastern counties, where there are many aerodromes, we find that this problem falls far harder on the local education authorities there than on those in some of the inland counties. They have to bear all the burden of sending these children to a boarding school, and they are not able to do so.
My hon. Friends and 1, and indeed hon. Members on the other side too, have on several occasions represented this state of affairs to the Government. I want to give my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary fair warning that when the Government are returned to office we shall redouble our efforts to get this injustice righted and will accept no refusal. It is time now to tell my hon. Friend that we are determined to have this matter of the education of the children of Service men attended to, and we intend to ensure that they receive proper justice.
In conclusion, I want to thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for what he has done for the countryside. He has given a shot in the arm to rural education. He has restored many of the things that were taken away. For example, to take a very small one first, there is the question of the building of halls in Country villages. These things mean a great deal to the countryside, and he has enabled them to go ahead and repair their schools. What my right hon. Friend said was absolutely correct. From my own experience I know that the local education committees of county councils are out to a clinch in work, and happy indeed is the Minister of Education who can say that about all the local education authorities. As far as the countryside is concerned, we have now the best Minister of Education we have had for some time, and we are determined to have him back again soon.
6.6 p.m.
Mr. George Thomas: I always welcome the opportunity of following the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland), but I think his concluding words were not as gracious as they might have been in view of the presence of the Minister's predecessor. I consider they would have been better left out. The hon. and gallant Gentleman drew attention to the fact that in education debates there is often a great deal of agreement on either side of the House. But if the teachers of the country could see this Committee this afternoon they would be very disappointed. There is a fair number on this side of the Committee, but, with the exception of those who are obliged to sit in the Chamber, we have been looking at a desert on the other side since this debate began.
It is my privilege to address many teachers' organisations from time to time, and I like to indicate to them that there is a renewed interest in education in the House. The renewed interest has not manifested itself unduly this afternoon. I would at once differ from the hon. and gallant Gentleman when he says that education should be kept out of politics. That is asking for the impossible. Education is very much a political issue.
Commander Maitland: If I said that I made a great mistake. I thought I said party politics, and I am quite certain that the hon. Gentleman really knows that that is what I said.
Mr. Thomas: I mean party politics, too, and it is poppycock to pretend that the education service is not affected by the colour of the Government of the day. Of course it is. How quickly we felt the cool breezes from the present Administration when the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsburgh) was given charge of the schools of this country.
Commander Maitland: Entirely due to the financial crisis caused by the party opposite.
Hon. Members: No.
Mr. Thomas: The hon. and gallant Gentleman must not provoke me, because I want to be polite to the right hon. Lady. I could ask some awkward questions as, for instance, why the right hon. Lady is

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sitting on the back benches now instead of on the Treasury Bench. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman is going to suggest that party politics do not enter into education, he has learned very little since he has been in the House.
The Minister of Education made a most interesting speech, and in part, if I may say so, it was an acceptable speech. All I would say is that, while I do not want to be cynical, it is remarkable how many of these things which have been denied us for three and a half years of the Administration's life are now promised on the verge of an Election. We have seen a succession of Ministers coming here and promising us things in the sweet by and by after the General Election. The Minister of Transport promised to spend hundreds of millions of pounds, the Minister of Health is going to spend hundreds of millions of pounds, the Minister of Fuel and Power hundreds of millions of pounds and the Minister of Education a few pounds—but even that not yet. We are living in an era of great promises.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: Which will be broken.
Mr. Thomas: Whether they will be broken remains to be seen. It depends on who is in office.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon), who opened so forcefully for the Opposition, drew attention to the fact that the size of classes is a major problem in the education service of this country. The Minister received a good welcome when he visited the conference of the National Union of Teachers at Scarborough. It is a very polite organisation and it also gave a good welcome to the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side when she visited the conference. But the Minister knows that nothing agitates the minds of teachers more than the ever-increasing size of classes. It is no good him smiling at us and saying, "By only 3 per cent." There are over 10,000 classes more with 40 on the register than there were before that Administration placed its hands on the education services.
Dame Florence Horsbrugh: But how many more classes?
Mr. Thomas: Did the right hon. Lady wish to intervene?
Dame Florence Horsbrugh: I am sorry. I should not have interrupted. I was merely calculating for my own benefit how many more classes there were as a whole.
Mr. Thomas: I cannot forget that I was a school teacher, and I know that it is the size of the class which determines the teacher's work. It is harder today for the teacher to do a proper job than it was three and a half years ago. That is the blunt truth.
I have been asking Questions of the Minister about the size of classes in the City of Cardiff, and, since the Minister digressed to mention his own constituency, I hope he will not mind if I do the same thing at this very interesting period in political history. I have been asking the Minister a lot of Questions about the size of classes in Cardiff and he has replied that the latest information which he could provide us was for January last year.
That holds no interest for anyone. Every month the teachers, as the Minister knows, are required to supply their education authority with the average number in every class in the school. The statistics about the increased size of classes for which we have been asking have been available to the Minister if he would pick up a telephone and ask for them from the local authorities. But I can understand him, on political grounds, not being anxious to supply this information.
Who is it that suffers when the size of classes soars, as is the case at present? My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) told us this afternoon that his little son goes to an L.C.C. school, that there are 50 in the class, that the average size of class in that school is 46 and that there is no class with fewer than 40 pupils except the class of the mentally retarded.
We can have pleasant speeches from the benches opposite, but the cold truth is that children are being denied a fair opportunity when they are in these large classes. The children who suffer most, of course, are those who deserve our attention most. The backward children become still more backward when they are in a large class. The teacher strikes the note for the average pupil and the good pupils will go on despite the circumstances, but the tail of the class, which

819
is upon the mind and conscience of the good teacher, suffers far more than it ought.
I agree with what has been said about the supply of the right type and kind of teacher. We can already see when the increased school population will have reached its peak and begun to decline, and I hope that the Minister is not indifferent to the prospect of a three-year course of training for teachers in place of the two-year course which has been the average with the training colleges. Within the next decade it will easily become a distinct possibility.
I want to refer to the question of secondary education, for we in Wales have a special interest in it. We were first off the mark at the beginning of this century in developing the State type of grammar school. Over 30 per cent. is the average of the school population in Wales which receives a secondary grammar education. The local authorities are to be congratulated upon the enlightened way in which they realised that we could play our part only if secondary grammar education were available for all who could benefit from it. That remains one of the principal aims of every educationist in Wales—as much in Holyhead as in Cardiff; and we are satisfied that the comprehensive school will improve the prospects of grammar school education for a great many children who ought to be receiving it.
The Minister himself supplied us with evidence this afternoon when he instanced from the secondary modern school at Chippenham three young people who, in the opinion of the headmaster, would have been better in the secondary grammar school but who did not go there because it involved a change of school, of friends and of background. If at Chippenham they had had the comprehensive school which Holyhead has, that problem would not have arisen, the children would have been transferred within the school and they would have had the opportunity which I am quite sure the Minister would wish them to have.
I do not believe there can be stagnation in education. The secondary modern school is a fine school and I agree with the tribute which the Minister has paid to it. Wonderful work is being done in
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the secondary modern school, as in all other schools. Our colleagues pull their weight whatever school they are in. But we must be willing to change and to see advances made, and to experiment with the comprehensive school—the Minister showed that he agrees with this—is bound to mean interference with grammar schools in given areas, and somebody's children will have to be pioneers in these comprehensive schools.
I would not say that it is the panacea for everything in secondary education, but certainly it will help to break down this awful scholarship examination which, throughout my professional career, was a curse upon the system, upon the children and upon the teachers. The prospect of ending this scholarship examination which takes place at the age of 11, without damaging the educational prospects of the youngster, is now very real. The comprehensive school can serve not only to break down social barriers and remove some of the snobbery which unhappily, as we all know, still plays an important part in our education service, but also to give the teachers an opportunity freely to transfer within schools those youngsters who clearly are not in their right setting.
Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind our experience in Holyhead, where I have had the privilege of being one of the governors of the comprehensive school? After some years of comprehensive education, it is found there is a distinct levelling up to the grammar school level and not a levelling down.
Mr. Thomas: All hon. Members will undoubtedly be glad to hear that voice from Holyhead, which speaks with authority. The doctrinaire people are those on the other side of the Committee. On this matter they are the people who are afraid of change. We owe little to the people who have always wanted to mark time. The Conservative Party is not even content with that; it would have us walk backwards in education.
It is impossible to take part in the debate today without realising that we shall soon be having a General Election. To be frank, some of the points that I have made, like some of the points made by the Minister, have had direct reference to the fact that the Government's record in education will soon have to be

821
examined by the people. No promise made now can wipe out the sorry record of past years. I could have wished that we had the debate without the atmosphere of a General Election, but I must say to the right hon. Gentleman that I hope he will have a more forthcoming attitude even yet about the newer type of secondary education to which every teacher who has spoken this afternoon has given his blessing.
6.22 p.m.
Mr. I. J. Pitman: Before I follow what has been said by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), I should like to support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) and the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) about technical education and its importance. I do not think it can be denied that there has been in earlier years a considerable emphasis on all other kinds of education and that it is time that the Cinderella of the educational world was given a fairer deal and taken to a ball.
I should very much like too to support my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland) about the postings of airmen in particular and Service men in general. I was for a short time on the personnel staff of the Air Ministry, and I can assure hon. Members that a conscientious posting officer is torn about the educational consequences and the requirements of the children and the parents who are involved in postings.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) is not in his place at the moment. It struck me that it was necessary to call attention to the complete travesty of the facts as he sought to paint them. He must surely know that his disquiet that we are losing ground rather than gaining it is hopelessly short of the mark. He produced two criteria of measurements; first, the pupil-teacher ratio and, secondly, the degree to which classes were above the maximum. He was claiming that we are losing ground at the very time when we are turning out more teachers and recruiting more teachers to the training colleges. I am the chairman of a society responsible for training colleges, and I know it to be a fact that we are turning out teachers at a far greater rate than
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ever and at a rate far greater than the normal demand for them. Therefore, how can it possibly be that we are going back, which is what the hon. Gentleman sought to establish?
The fact is that by annual accumulation there is an aggravation in the abnormal numbers in education, and that present shortages are the product not of present deficiencies but past deficiencies. Being Minister of Education is rather like being a railway engine driver. If one has a long journey ahead of one with loads of passengers to pick up at various times and various points on the route, if one does not pass certain points by a certain time one is already late and bound to be late in arriving at one's destination. If anyone cares to introduce party politics into the story, it is perfectly clear that the train of education got hopelessly behind in 1945, and has remained hopelessly behind ever since, and that this is the first time the engine driver has managed to go very much faster than the average speed necessary for his journey and the first time when he is beginning to catch up substantially on lost time.
Mr. Edward Evans: What about 1942?
Mr. Pitman: If the hon. Member wishes to go back to 1942, let him examine the plans of the London County Council, a Labour council. He can extrapolate the places which London had planned at that time to provide, but it was perfectly clear that with the proposals which they made for additional places over the years there would be a hopeless under-provision of places for their inevitably larger school population. One has only to look at the birth-rate in various parts of the country to forecast exactly what will be the requirements, and in terms of both places and teachers the deficiencies are of the past and at the present we are adding cumulatively each year to the totals and are rapidly catching up. The nation ought to know the true facts and not travesties of the facts and ought to congratulate the Minister upon being on the footplate at a time when the educational train is travelling at such a satisfactorily high rate.
With reference to the comprehensive school, the problem arises only in areas of high density population. Hon. Members are pushing against an already open

823
door if they talk about the need for comprehensive schools in rural areas where there is a low density population, whether it be in Anglesey, Cumberland or the great open spaces of Salisbury Plain, for in such areas one has to have a comprehensive school or spend a lot of money—a lot of travelling time is also entailed—in running a school which may have enough teachers for the academic subjects and for the practical subjects as well, which may have a strong sixth form and appropriate facilities for the less gifted as well.
Hon. Members opposite are equally pushing against an open door in so far as it is desirable to have experimental comprehensive schools in the new housing estates in urban areas. What they are therefore talking about are the urban areas of high density population which have been long established. Let me instance my own constituency, for Bath is a case in point. It has a population of 80,000, and the secondary school population is about 3,200. To begin with, there is a very practical point that in Bath a number of good schools of the other character are already built, and it is just plumb nonsense to start talking as if one is going to solve the problem by ignoring what exists and creating a brand new concept of comprehensive schooling in Bath and comparable cities.
Mr. Cove: No such thing was said.
Mr. Pitman: The hon. Member for Cardiff, West was saying that he thinks the comprehensive school is right for the child, and, if that is so, presumably he commits himself to doing that which is right for the child and arranging a comprehensive school system in Bath. Why should he deny what he thinks is right to the children of Bath?
However, take the school population in the secondary age group of Bath at 3,200. What are we to have? Are we to have one Kidbrooke of 3,200, or two Kid-brookes of 1,600, one on one side of the river and one on the other? Suppose we are to have four Kidbrookes—800 pupils a time, for that is the very lowest figure on which one can run a comprehensive school if one is to give a decent education to the grammar school child who has real potentialities for future development. With only one, or with even four
824
schools, there would be no prestige in going to a single school or four identical schools, and I can assure the Committee that it will not be long before the people of Bath discover that within each comprehensive school there is a grammar stream, a B stream and a stream of people who are backward readers.
One will not stop Mrs. Smith running around and throwing out her chest and saying, "My Johnny is in the grammar school stream." One will be back again precisely where one started, with a system of selection being resented. Of course, it is bound to be resented since it represents facts which are necessarily unpalatable.
The real problem is not whether one may escape selection but whether one prefers to have one's selection done objectively on the outside, or internally within the school. In either case I am all in favour of having as good selection as possible, but even with the Archangel Gabriel doing the selection one is bound to have discards and resentment by those so discarded.
Mr. Ede: I do not think that the Archangel Gabriel will be comprehensive when he blows the trump.
Mr. Kenneth Mr. Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton): Very few are chosen.
Mr. Pitman: The real point is surely this: what is the best opportunity for children in such urban areas of high density population. We have heard the hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. C. Hughes) allege that there is a better education in a comprehensive school. I can tell hon. Members that I have been to a big comprehensive school in Vancouver. It was about the size of Kidbrooke. The principal said to me, "If only I had the selective system that you have in Britain. Thirty per cent."—and it is true in our schools, too,—" of these people are not in the situation of being able to pass school examinations as we would understand them. The rest pass without effort and without any difficulty from grade to grade and the whole of the school just laughs at the standard which I am forced to accept. I just cannot keep the good ones, the people who excel, up to scratch, because they know that the standards I have to set to allow the others through are bound to be so low." They excel without effort in such poor company.

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The right policy is surely that of the Minister to try to improve secondary modern schools and in so doing to improve the lot of the people who do not have the good fortune to be borne with the genes, or whatever it is, to send them to an academic training. The Committee ought to recognise that there is no such thing as a late developer. That is a misnomer. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] A similar thing is happening in the medical profession where it is said that there is no such thing as fibrositis. The people who suffer say "Oh, oh." too, but it does not alter the fact that the word is a misnomer. It is not a case of inflammation of the fibres, but altogether another cause. A late developer is not a late developer but somebody who had reading difficulty in his early stages—an early failer in reading ability.
The Minister has read a Latin quotation. I did not hear the Latin quotation, so I may be excused for not understanding it. It is possible for any of us to read whole quantities of Latin, but that does not mean that we understand it. The important point of the Watts-Vernon test of reading ability is that comprehension is also tested. The trouble with the so-called late developer is that he has, because of his early failure in reading, been unable in his early years to take advantage of the schooling offered to him. However, when he does master his reading, he really gallops ahead.
Real progress with secondary modern schools is the answer to our problem—both in improving reading ability in the junior school and in developing the right courses in the secondary modern school. As the Minister said, we want to make the secondary modern school a really good school. I could take hon. Members to schools in Bath which are first-class secondary modern schools. They could and will be even better. They will become even better in the development of practical education modelled on the lines of that which used to be given in the old junior technical school, which was a very successful kind of school indeed. Such practically conceived education is the real answer, coupled with an improvement in the teaching of reading in the early stages of education so that we may have a secondary modern school in which parents may be proud to have their children and in which children may be brought to a
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real stage of development and to university standard, as is more than possible.
6.36 p.m.
Mr. W. G. Cove: The Government have found a very good salesman in the Minister of Education. He undoubtedly has some goods to sell and he has also indulged in a great deal of imagination. As he was speaking I thought that he was not clear about what development would take place in our education system. His reference to wiping out the grammar schools through the medium of the comprehensive school was indeed a fantastic statement. There is not and never has been a proposal that the Labour Party should wipe out the grammar schools.
Sir D. Eccles: If the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) will read "Challenge to Britain," he will find that it pins its faith to the wholesale comprehensive principle now.
Mr. Cove: The Minister's suggestion was ridiculous. It is entirely alien to the mood and spirit of the Labour Party; it is not revolutionary enough to do that; it is too orthodox. To say that the Labour Party is in favour of abolishing the grammar schools is an absolutely pure, political absurdity and a misrepresentation.
That is creating political prejudice. The party opposite is the party which is importing political prejudice into discussion of education. I am absolutely staggered that it should be said that we must have a selective examination to fill the places in the grammar schools. Experience shows that the examination at the age of 11 is a fallacious test. The best report of all on the educational system is the Scottish report which emphasises the futility of the results of the examination of children at the age of 11. The tripartite system is based upon examinations which are vulnerable indeed from all aspects of criticism.
I want to say a few words about comprehensive schools, which have been so much talked about in the debate. Schools have a social connotation. That does not mean a political party connotation, but every system of schools has social roots, as it were. The social basis of the comprehensive school system is a faith in the ordinary ability of the ordinary normal child and in giving an opportunity to that

827
normal child to develop his capacities and his aptitudes in the best possible conditions. That is the meaning of the comprehensive school system.
I cannot see how we are to get a cohesive society if we are to segregate children at the age of 11 into various streams, a grammar
school stream, a secondary modern stream, and, I suppose, a technical stream. Where is the fulfilment of the main purpose of the 1944 Act in the tripartite system? The central theme of that Act was a national system of unified education. I hold that it is absolutely essential, in order to achieve that, that there should be comprehensive schools.
In the comprehensive school we have all phases of life, all the varying aptitudes and capacities—the boy who is good at mathematics, the child who is good at languages and the boy who is not good at any subject but who may be good at sport. That builds up a cohesive, solidified community. We do not get that by segregation on a tripartite basis which destroys the essential democratic meaning of the purpose and practice of education.
We ought to make it perfectly clear from the Labour Party point of view that the comprehensive school is the answer to the need of the lower middle classes whose children have failed to pass the 11-plus examination into the grammar school. That was brought home to me in the place where I live. I have told this story before, and I should like to repeat it now. A bank manager had two sons, two normal, ordinary children. Both failed the examination at the age of 11 and were unable to get into the grammar school.
The alternative for them was either a secondary modern school or a private school. The secondary modern school did not come up to the desires of the parents. Children there normally leave at the age of 15, and the school has far fewer facilities than are needed. I do not want to be derogatory, but the teachers there have lower academic qualifications. In brief, the secondary modern school did not meet the needs of that middle class parent and, therefore, he sent his children to a private school. That put upon him a heavy financial burden which he could ill afford to carry.
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We shall drive the Conservative Party out of their entrenched position in respect of comprehensive schools simply by telling the ordinary citizen that their ordinary normal children will have far better opportunities in comprehensive schools than in schools under the tripartite system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said that teachers were very sore and disgruntled about the size of classes. There is another point which I expect the Minister knows about. There is complete disgruntlement about the extraneous duties imposed upon teachers. At the conference of the N.U.T. at Scarborough the teachers went amok over this. They spoke very strongly about having to supervise school meals and to spend time in connection with registration. There are hundreds of classes where the kiddies still have their meals at the desks and then have to stay in the same atmosphere for the rest of the day. I should like to know what the Minister proposes to do to erect canteens and kitchens and to provide better facilities for school feeding.
Finally, I would say that I have no fear at all, when discussing the major policies of the Labour Party, that we shall win through. The Minister this afternoon was a good salesman. He had some goods to sell, but for the future it was promises. We have been told that we should wait and see what will happen. I do not think that we shall, because the General Election will result in a change of Government and the appointment of a new Minister of Education.
6.45 p.m.
Mr. Kenneth Pickthorn: I shall not speak at any great length, and I shall at least begin by trying not to be excessively controversial. I welcomed, as I am sure everybody did, the announcement that was made today about the easing of allowances in teachers' training colleges and about university allowances. Both those are very good things.
I noticed that the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon), near the end of her speech, about what she wanted, said that all these things would cost a great deal more money. The things one likes, either as having been done or as desirable to be done, are very apt to be the things which cost money: I must say that I have always felt that one of the

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odd things about persons interested in education is that they seem to be less aware of the realities behind those words than uneducated people commonly are.
I should like to begin by saying—and this is another thing which costs more money—that it has occurred to me, whenever I have seen schools, how very little of the gross amount of money spent goes on books. We are all apt to say as a matter of pious commonplace that all that matters in teaching is the teacher. Indeed, I very firmly believe it. I believe that the desks, the buildings and all the rest of it do not matter very much, though by that I do not mean that it is not our duty to make them as good as we think they can properly be made. Certainly if all that did matter very much, I never had any education at all.
The teachers are what matters most, but there are quite a lot of children, even quite young children, for whom books are among the best teachers. There are many who not so long after they leave school will begin to find their own way about books, if they have at school got the habit of wanting to find their own way about books. I have no direct formula to suggest about what ought to be done or where the money ought to come from; but this is a genuinely educational matter, though I do not want to see the Minister of Education, and still less the House of Commons, directing education in the primary sense; yet perhaps it is proper that in our debates here we should sometimes talk of what is properly and primarily educational.
There are two other matters of the same sort on which I venture to ask the Committee to allow me to speak. One is what has been said about technical education. I entirely agree that we should do more for technical education. I am almost even tempted to agree with those who say that we ought to do more for the status of technical education or technical teachers.
I am almost tempted, but I do not quite yield to the temptation, because my general experience of life is that once one starts caring about the status either of people or activities one almost invariably does more harm than good; so I do not want to say much about the status of the thing. I only want to say this, if it is not thought too high-falutin: there is a tendency sometimes to look
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upon a person who comes into education, comes into a genuine intellectual activity of his own, whether as teacher or learner, via a technique, to think of him as rather inferior to the chap who comes in via learning or teaching himself the theory and then perhaps making application of it either for the purpose of earning a living or by way of earning a living or invention, or so on. I am quite sure that is wrong.
Indeed I can think of some living men—Sir John Cockroft is, I believe, an example of a man whom I am certain I am right in saying is of the highest possible intellect from the purely academic or theoretical point of view who, so to speak, learned his own intellect and learned how to use it and to be excited about it through coming in on the technical side.
I am sure that we need not be afraid, if there are not enough resources to go round to improve all kinds of teaching—and there certainly are nothing like enough, whether one reckons in money or anything else—if there are not enough resources to improve all sorts of teaching, we need not think that in diverting something to technical which might have gone to academic we are necessarily doing some injury to the highest. I am sure that is not so, and the way to make certain that it does not become so is not by pinning on to technical courses lectures on "The Child in Poetry" or "The Cat in Art" and so on. I am sure that is not the best way to do it.
I am sure that the way to do it is so to teach our technical subjects that each young person up to his own intellectual ceiling becomes aware of what intellectual activities are and how admirable and enjoyable intellectual honesty is. I am sure that is the way in which great men such as Faraday or Sir John Cockroft and others have become great scientists or theoreticians via the technical. I hope, therefore, in choosing what proportion of our resources we can spend on technical education, we shall not be apt to think that it may be something inferior, but I hope we shall behave so that technical teachers will be, as I am sure most of them already are, inspired to think that the way up, spiritually so to speak, theoretically or academically, is the kind of way which I have indicated.
Having said all these rather high falutin' things, I hope the House will

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permit me one other. This is about the finding of enough teachers, especially of enough mathematical and scientific teachers. I have said a little on this subject before in the House, and I shall be forgiven for this, I hope, because we all know that if we say anything in this House three times and it then has some little effect we are very lucky, and that to say it once and to expect any effect is hopeless.
About the finding of teachers, especially scientific, there certainly are not enough good teachers on any subject. Of that we can be perfectly certain. I do not know of any profession at all—any profession requiring literacy—which is not worried about its recruitment at the present time and has not been worried about its recruitment for the last 20 years, certainly the last 15. There are not going to be enough good teachers.
There is a particular difficulty in the case of scientists and mathematicians. There is the particular difficulty of the commercial value of the skills which the eligible men have. There are other particular difficulties, but that is enough. I am a little frightened by the announcement by Her Majesty's Government or by the Federation of British Industries or by the T.U.C. or by any of the other of these connotations of initials, about what they are going to do in order to induce people to go into this job.
I think that we are getting very near to a kind of direction of labour for persons with certain sorts of intellectual aptitude. I have said this before. I do not say that it has gone too far yet, but I think that the House should watch it with great care. And I add this; I am certain it is not going to be very effective. That kind of procedure never is very effective. Therefore, I ask my right hon. Friend to consult with his advisers about a quite different suggestion.
My own belief is that almost everybody—and I say this with respect to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas)—that it is not really so much the Conservative, even with a small "c," who is apt to go on repeating the slogans of the previous generation and even the one behind that; on the whole it is the "Advanced," the
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"Progressives"; they are brought up on slogans and it is rather more difficult for them to change them—everyone goes on repeating the stuff about science getting more and more specialised, technicalised, departmentalised, compartmentalised, and my impression, not as a scientist but as a man who has spent his life partly in intimate conversations with many of the greatest and best-informed scientists, is that the opposite has been the fact for some considerable time.: the sciences have all tended more and more during the last 20 years, especially, to approximate to mathematics, and to need mathematics for any understanding of them. In that sense they have come together again.
There is perhaps a kind of school education which is an education for all science now as there was 300 years ago and there was not 30 years ago. I ask my right hon. Friend to consult the best experts he has got, official and unofficial, about what can be done, and, if he agrees with me, to see what can be done—I think that there are things that can be done—to try to make school masters persuade school boys and school girls interested in science, that what they are interested in they are capable of being excited about, and that the most important thing is mathematical preparation, certainly up to 16, probably up to any school-leaving age.
The important thing is that it need not be too frightening if we were not getting enough scientific knowledge. We shall have cause to be frightened in trying to keep up with the modern world if we cannot get enough mathematics masters of a sort to persuade boys, not only those so naturally mathematical that they will so specialise anyhow, to go on and try to get up to their mathematical ceiling whatever it may be. If all the boys in the country get up to their mathematical ceiling, we can be perfectly certain that we shall have all the scientists that can be got out of our population.
All that may seem a long way from politics; perhaps it may be rather more fully considered than in these debates it has been. If I may come back to politics for a bit, I would say that there have been charges and counter-charges about whose fault it is that comprehensive schools are politics, but I agree with hon.

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Members opposite in this connection in not distinguishing between politics and party politics.
If there are people in the Parliamentary Socialist Party who are capable of second thoughts, and whose minds have not been absolutely closed on this matter, I beg them to think twice about it. I think that it was the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East who said that she did not want education imposed and directly managed from Curzon Street. I very much doubt if all this comprehensive policy will be wanted, imposed from Transport House. I know for certain—and no amount of derision can shake me from this—that there are parts of the country, even where the Socialist Party have been in control of local authorities, which have rather regretfully and halfheartedly accepted this direction from on high. They all know that Socialism is good, Socialism is progress—and all that; but they rather regretfully accept the particularisation of that down to the point that comprehensive schools are the only thing. That certainly does not go down altogether well everywhere.
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) has left the Chamber. I want to refer to something he said. He said that the definition of a comprehensive school is that it is a school for the ordinary normal child. That is not really a definition, it is a misuse of the word "definition." I will not bother defining what "definition" does mean, but that is not what it means. I would warn the hon. Gentleman also of this: the mothers of England are not much interested in ordinary, normal children—at least so far as I have ever known them, they are not interested in ordinary normal children.
Nor do I know how he reconciles this refusal to have anything to do with selectivity—which was his word—how he reconciles that with having one sort of school, and one only, designed for one sort of child, how you do it without having some way of selecting the ordinary, normal child from the others? It has already been said, and I am perfectly certain that it is true, that if one once gets one's unique school—in the French sense, one school and one only—first, it has to be a great deal bigger than anyone has said today. People talk about doing it with 800, but it cannot be done with three times that number—
Miss Bacon: Nonsense.
Mr. Pickthorn: It cannot be done with three times that number—
Mr. Edward Short: It is working.
Mr. Pickthorn:—and have as good a sixth form as there is at present in a first-rate grammar school. That is mathematically demonstrable.
Mr. C. Hughes: Is the hon. Member aware that all the children of Anglesey are well catered for in four comprehensive schools?
Mr. Pickthorn: I am delighted to know that the children of Anglesey are well catered for. But the children of Anglesey are rather peculiar children in various respects. One respect is that they are selected by geography and by a particular bit of water, and that there is no other way in which secondary education could be provided.
Secondly, I do not understand the people who think that there has been enough experience of this sort of school—even of one such school—at this stage. How long have they had these schools? Is it four or five years? Certainly, there has not been time for anyone to be certain about that.
Mrs. Harriet Slater: How does the hon. Gentleman propose that we shall get experience, unless this Government allow us to try?
Mr. Pickthorn: I was about to tell the hon. Lady.
What I propose is that those local authorities who very much want to try this experiment, and who in the judgment of the Minister have such arrangements that it could be there tried—without undue risk of anything approaching disaster, a great loss of known values—I propose in such places that it should be tried. But that is quite another thing from saying that we must have it everywhere and that if we do not have it we have not got democracy. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, we were told that. We were not quite told that the sun would never shine on Saturday afternoons, but it came pretty well almost to that.
I propose that if this thing is to be an experiment it should be an experiment.

835
I warn hon. Gentlemen—and this is the last thing I have to say—of this one other thing about comprehensive schools. It has been said already, but I think it may be said in a rather different way once more. First of all, I think we all exaggerate—we do great harm by exaggerating and tend to cause the evil we deprecate—when we say we are imposing an exaggerated effect on the child's whole life, that the child's whole life was decided at 11. I do not think that is true.
I am the kind of chap who was rather successful at examinations, but I do not know that that ever did me much good. Looking back, I do not know whether, if I had been unsuccessful at examinations, I might not have been either a happier or a better man—both of them conceivably. I think that we all exaggerate enormously the extent to which a child's fate turns, and we know which way, on an examination at a given moment.
Secondly, I would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to consider this point. I suppose the example of the maximum of making examinations important in a sense is the Cambridge University system. In fact so extreme was it that there was a time when the whole thing might turn on one examination. Nowadays people always, I think, take two. It is often said, "How monstrous to judge on one examination the whole effect of an education."
There is something to be said on the other side. One of the things tested in an examination—I agree that this should not be tested more than can be helped in a child of 11 so as to be seen by the child testing it—but one of the important things which ought to be tested, even in a child of 11, is the tendency to do better on important occasions than on normal occasions.
If I were choosing someone, if I were going in first for England, as I have always wanted to do, and were choosing the chap to go in with me, I should not necessarily choose the best batsman to be my partner. I should choose the sort of chap who in the top class of batsmen tended to go in and do better in Test matches than in friendly games. That is an important part of the whole examination and selec-
836
tion. A child cannot wholly be kept away from it even up to the age of 12.
Thirdly, and most important about this business of selectivity: if you are going to do anything, whatever happens, you think you can get a comprehensive school of 800, and I think that in any normal conditions you can hardly get as good a sixth form as, I will not say Manchester Grammar School, which is a rather special sort of school, but in a first-rate grammar school not perhaps of as great distinction as Manchester, with much fewer than 3,000, which I think much too big. Whether I may be right or wrong about that, whether this new school, which is to be the only kind of school, is to be for 800 or for 4,000, either way, of this I am absolutely certain: that it has got to be divided up into sets. There cannot just be six forms, otherwise we shall have classes which really are too big.
That has got to be done with regard to the aptitude and ability, in the consecrated words of the statute, of the child. I am quite sure it will quickly be comprehended in those families where these things are watched closely. The mother is going to know pretty quickly which stream. And in those neighbourhoods where these things are watched closely between neighbours, they are going to know pretty quickly too.
The notion that you can get away from snobbery—first of all, the notion that we can ever get away from snobbery is an odd one—the notion that people who think the only thing that matters in education, judging from some of their speeches, has something to do with class, esteem, status—the question of whether or not a bank manager sends his children to a fee-paying school—to think that such people can get away from snobbery is over-optimistic. I am certain we shall not get away from it this way whether 800 or 4,000 children attend the school: their parents or the neighbours will know which are the clever boys and which are not. And it is no use kidding ourselves, and we do kid ourselves, about the fact that every boy is the best boy in the school at something or other. It may be so in God's sight and, God knows, in God's sight we are all such small potatoes and there is not much to choose. But so far as things of human calculating or guessing go, I will undertake to say, give me a school where the boys all run faster

837
than the others and they will all do better Latin verses as well, and vice versa.
7.10 p.m.
Mr. M. Turner-Samuels: I hope the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) does not expect me to follow him in the vaudeville version of education he has just presented the Committee. Certainly it would take a much more skilful person than I am to canalise the tergiversation to which we have just listened from the hon. Member.
It is all very well for anyone like myself, an onlooker, to sit in this Chamber and listen to the speeches which have come from hon. Members opposite. They started with the usual aplomb and address of the Minister, who undoubtedly came to the Dispatch Box with obviously great self-satisfaction and elation. It has been notable in the expiring days of this Parliament that Members on the Government Front Bench have been patting themselves so much on the back that they are in danger of knocking themselves out. That is what I think is going to happen when the impending General Election comes.
When we are discussing education and the Minister comes to the Box with that pronounced self-satisfaction we saw today, I would ask him whether it is not right that he should consider how the education system, whatever it is, is being administered. I want to point out to him an instance of maladministration which puts into the shade quite a lot of what he told us this afternoon. It seems to me that it does not matter how good is the system of education, if it is badly administered and there is injustice, or the pupil is not getting the benefit which that system is intended to confer, the system is not working properly and certainly is not worth what it is alleged to be worth.
This is now my only opportunity to raise a case of maladministration in a section of the education system which, I submit, is a very serious matter for the child concerned. It refers to the examination for admission of a pupil to secondary education. It is a case from Barnwood School, near Gloucester, in my constituency, which in my submission is open to the most severe criticism. The Minister certainly cannot hide behind the action of the local education authority, because the Minister himself confirmed what the authority did. It is part of our
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educational system that a child of 11 reaches a point where a decision is to be made for his future education and whether, under certain tests, he is to go on to secondary education or not. I am not going to argue whether that test or system is a good one or not, but I am going to deal purely with the way in which it is, apparently, being administered.
There are special cases in which a child of exceptional ability is allowed to sit for the admission examination on the attainment of 10 years of age. At Barnwood School there is a pupil, Timothy Dundas, who has consistently been in the first three of his class and—I emphasise this—although he attained the appropriate age of 10 years on the appropriate date, he was prevented from sitting the examination with the consequence that, although his other schoolmates were allowed to pass on to further advanced education, he has been condemned to wait another 12 months before he can take the examination.
It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to come to the Committee with the self-elation we saw today, but I ask the Minister to bring his mind to the circumstances of this lad, whose whole future may be at stake. Here is a lad whose industry and ability have qualified him to go on to secondary education and the local education authority—with the subsequent confirmation of the Minister—has been an obstruction of that lad's advancement in that respect. It is therefore very important that the Committee and the country should understand how this part of the education system is being administered by the local education authority in question, and upheld by the present Minister.
The local education authority issued a form in connection with this subject, setting out its regulation in reference to it. The regulation makes it quite clear that pupils of exceptional ability who reach the age of 10 years by 1st March, 1955, but would not be 11 years of age by 1st September, 1955, may be examined. It was as clear as could be—not only literally, but in law—that this lad, born on 2nd March, would by 1st March, 1955, attain his 10 years and reach the age which in law entitled him to sit the examination. The local education authority, however, took up a really

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childish point by saying that because the lad was born on 2nd March—in fact he was born two hours after midnight on 1st March—he was not 10 years of age on the material date and therefore not entitled to sit the examination. That was a complete misconstruction because, in law, the child attained his 10th year, not on 2nd March, but on the day next before the attainment of his 10th birthday, namely, the 1st March. That is an old proposition in the law which is almost hallowed, and which everyone in this Committee should know. It goes back to 1704, and is probably even older than that.
There was on the facts absolutely no excuse whatever for the local education authority rejecting this lad and preventing him from taking the examination. The father naturally took up the matter at once with the local education authority. He pointed out that the boy was being left behind by his schoolmates who were allowed to go forward and pointed out the effect this would have on the boy and on his future outlook. The local education authority—I suppose with a bureaucratic rigidity for which some of them are sometimes distinguished—obstinately refused to do anything about it, so the father wrote a letter to the Minister. The father pointed out, most explicitly, what the position was. In the meantime he had ascertained the legal position and made it absolutely clear to the Minister that the boy was 10 years and, consequently, qualified to take his place in the classroom for that examination for admission to a secondary school.
The local education authority was at least sensible enough not to take the further point, which I suppose in order to cover the matter up the Ministry subsequently took, and to which I will presently refer. The local education authority's regulations state that pupils of exceptional ability who reach the age of 10 years "may be examined," and it really is pathetic that the Minister actually took the view that the construction to be placed on that part of the regulations was that it was in the discretion of the local educational authority whether the boy was to be allowed to sit for the examination or not.
I do not wish to quote from other parts of the rules and regulations, but I invite the Minister to look at them, when I
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think he will see that they cannot have any such meaning whatever. It is perfectly clear what the purpose is—that the headmaster and the parents should decide whether the lad was to sit or not. All that happens, as anybody who knows anything at all about these things is well aware, is that the headmaster recommends the lad knowing that the proper form has to be filled in, and then the lad in due course takes his place in the class, and the headmaster himself is usually the person who conducts the examination.
Therefore it was absolutely grotesque, and, in my submission, open to the most severe criticism, that the Ministry, instead of doing something sensible about this and saying to the local education authority, "You cannot deal with this lad in such a cursory, capricious and trumpery way; this lad is 10 years of age. Let him sit for the examination and put an end to all this artificial nonsense." Instead of doing that the Ministry, amongst other things, wrote a letter in which they say that Regulation 81H was merely an administrative instruction—although I think that obstruction would have been a better word there—to head teachers and school correspondents, and that it conferred no rights on parents or individual pupils.
Let me pause there for a moment to ask the Minister if he is saying in effect in that letter that a child, fully qualified at the proper age, can nevertheless be prevented from sitting for the examination when there is absolutely no justification for it at all, except by the caprice and the alleged unjustifiable discretion of the local educational authority. I venture to say that no such contention is sustainable, and no such view should ever have been put forward or accepted by a responsible Ministry.
Then, the Minister's letter goes on to say:
"You will note that the phrase 'who will reach the age of ten years by 1st March, 1955, but who will not be eleven years of age by 1st September, 1955,' is amplified by the words in brackets immediately following—'i.e. pupils born on or between 2nd September and 1st March, 1945.' Moreover, the authority's form 81H states merely that pupils born on or between the dates in question 'may be examined' and the parents of a pupil who was in fact qualified by age under the authority's regulations could not demand his admission to the examination as of right."

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I must ask the Minister to look at that letter again, and to ask himself seriously whether that was a proper letter to write in a case of this kind, because he was there laying down the proposition, which he contended was quite sustainable, that notwithstanding that the lad was entitled to sit for this examination on every basis of qualification, he could be prevented from doing so capriciously and unjustifiably merely because the particular local education authority did not like the colour of his hair or did not think that he ought to sit for the examination. In my submission, that proposition cannot be upheld.
I would ask the Minister if he will give me his attention for a moment. Ex concessi this lad was of age, and prima facie he was entitled to sit for this examination. It is no use the Minister or the local education authority trying to get out of what is a fact and a firm legal rule of construction, which make this lad 10 years of age on the crucial date and entitled him to enter that examination. If that is right, I ask the Minister this question, because after all this letter which he wrote may be only a process of face saving, but here is a young lad whose educational future and advancement is at stake. I ask the Minister whether he is going to allow this lad to suffer in this way.
For all I know, there may be many more cases of this kind, because if the Minister lays this down as a rule which is properly followed, it is quite likely, I should have thought, that there are many such cases in the country. I therefore ask him whether he is to take any steps now to correct this matter and put it right and to see that this lad is enabled to take his examination, and not hold back and obstruct this clear right of a steady, hard working and able lad, who ought to be not only able but encouraged to go forward in accordance with what was prescribed and intended at the time of the passing of the 1944 Act.
I appeal to the Minister. I have had many dealings with the Ministry of Education, and have always found them to be helpful and sensible. I ask them in this case to be helpful and sensible, and to take steps which will enable that lad to take his examination.
Sir D. Eccles: The hon. and learned Member kindly gave me notice of this
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case. I have sent for the file, which I have just seen for the first time, and I will certainly look into it. I should point out to him, however, that this form 81 H is a local authority circular, and I have no power under the Act to interpret local authority circulars. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me time to look into the position, I will do the best I can.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: I quite accept that, but I think the Minister will also accept that, under the provisions of the Education Act, his word to the local educational authorities on anything they may do is supreme, and that he can countercheck or even countermand what they have done. It is perfectly true that Circular 81 H may be a local administrative document, but it is issued under the powers which emanate from the central authority, and the central authority could deal with it, if necessary. My complaint is that this authority has done wrong, and that, the matter having been brought to the notice of the Minister, it was confirmed, instead of which it should have been rejected and the matter put right. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to the Minister, because I know that he will look into it, and if he thinks proper will see that the matter is put right.
7.28 p.m.
Mr. Angus Maude: I have always wanted to speak after the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester (Mr. Turner-Samuels), who is my favourite Parliamentary speaker from the other side, and on this occasion he did not disappoint us. The hon. and learned Gentleman started with quite a little homily on the dangers of self-satisfaction, and he devoted the rest of his speech to a plea for a child in his constituency who was brilliant beyond his years and whose educational future was being retarded.
I am sorry that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not get a better audience on his side of the Committee for his particular plea, because it could hardly have been in more poignant contrast to the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove), who spoke earlier and who gave one of the most devastating exposes of the real purpose of comprehensive schools that I have ever heard in my life, and I noticed some

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pretty gloomy faces among hon. Gentlement opposite when he was speaking.
As I understood him, the hon. Member for Aberavon gave two criteria about the comprehensive school. First, it was based on the ordinary intelligence of the ordinary normal child. Then he suggested that the comprehensive school was the answer to the problems of the lower middle-class parents whose children could not pass into the grammar schools. He finally said that social cohesion could only be secured by the comprehensive school and that we could not have social cohesion if we had segregation at the secondary school stage.
Passing over the question whether if we carried the doctrine of non-segregation to its logical conclusion we should have to abolish the special schools for mental deficiency, Borstal and approved schools and put the whole lot into the comprehensive school, I want to say what a perfect picture of the Socialist educational system that speech brings out. It suggests a secondary school system aimed and concentrated on the normal, ordinary child of the lower middle class. A more class-conscious concept it would be difficult to conceive of and one, I should have thought, peculiarly unwelcome to people of all types and classes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) said truly that mothers and parents generally are not interested in the ordinary normal child. They are interested in their own children. They have a pretty shrewd idea that their own children are potentially more brilliant than other children. At any rate, even if they do not feel that way, they want their children to have the best chance for developing whatever aptitudes they may have. Without some degree of selection that is impossible.
As has already been pointed out at least twice from this side of the Committee, nobody on the Opposition side has denied that even in a comprehensive school we cannot hope to give the best education consonant with a child's abilities and aptitudes unless there is some measure of selection. It is proposed at the same time to concentrate large numbers of children into a sort of amorphous mass, without either the traditions of a grammar school or the opportunity to
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develop particular kinds of education, which has been part of the particular genius of the British people and without which the prospects of the British people would be far worse than they have ever been.
The policy advocated by hon. Members opposite is not only unimaginative but is defeatist and reactionary. Hon. Members opposite are trying to destroy at its most promising stage one of the greatest educational experiments we have ever undertaken, the secondary modern school. I cannot for the life of me understand how people who profess the ideals which hon. Gentlemen opposite profess can want to do it. I can understand their wanting to destroy grammar schools, because there are many things about the grammar schools—[Interruption.]
Mr. Edward Evans: Nobody wants to destroy grammar schools.
Mr. Maude: The remark I made always produces from the Opposition side considerable apprehensive cries of dissent.
Mr. Evans Mr. Evans rose—
Mr. Maude: I have not given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I do not propose to. I know his views on this subject. They have been expressed here for many years ad nauseam. If we made comprehensive schools the normal method of secondary education we could not retain the old-established grammar schools unless it were by merging them into the comprehensive-school system. There is no other conceivable way of doing it without making a farce of the whole comprehensive school system.
How would hon. Members make good the boast that the comprehensive school would provide as good a stream as the grammar school, if they retained the grammar school in competition? That is ludicrous. They could not have two competing grammar school systems. The only way to get a proper academic sixth form in the comprehensive school would be by abolishing the grammar school.
Mr. M. Stewart: Does the hon. Member suggest that when the United Kingdom was formed England and Scotland were destroyed or abolished?
Mr. Maude: That precisely illustrates the point. The hon. Gentleman has stated that he does not wish to destroy the

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grammar school but only to merge it into the comprehensive school. I take it that is the point. If that is not what hon. Gentlemen opposite mean, for goodness sake let us know. Are they proposing to merge the existing grammar schools, irrespective of age, tradition or excellence of education, into the comprehensive schools? Are they?
Mr. Stewart: Let the hon. Gentleman answer my question.
Mr. Maude: I want to know what hon. Gentlemen opposite propose to do. I take it from their unwillingness to say "Yes" that it is "Yes" that they mean. Now we really do know the answer. They are not going to destroy the grammar schools but only to merge them into the much larger comprehensive schools, and so destroy their identities, their names, their traditions and the type of education which they have been giving. At least that is honest, even if it took a little time to get the admission by implication out of hon. Gentlemen opposite.
As a matter of fact, I was misled into this discussion. It was not about the future of grammar schools that I wanted to talk but about the future of the secondary modern school, which is in many ways more important. If the electorate return us at the next Election, as I am confident that they will, the grammar schools will be able to look after themselves. We shall be able to keep the hands of hon. Gentlemen opposite off them. The secondary modern schools will need very careful attention, encouragement and nurturing at what is a most critical stage in their development.
I have been saying for years that perhaps the greatest modern contribution of the British people to education is the secondary modern school. Given the chance, we could make something revolutionary and very important out of them. What we shall do if we succeed in the Election is to get rid of the whole stigma and aura of competition of merit which now exists in regard to the selection test at 11-plus. That is not mere theorising. Where a fair chance has been given to the system, which can be seen to be working, and where the secondary modern school provides the kind of education which is regarded in its type as equally good and satisfactory as that given by the grammar school in its type, the response of parents
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and children is immediately forthcoming in that area.
There is no question as to the disabilities from which the secondary modern schools have been suffering. Many of them are in the old buildings that were taken over from the pre-Hadow days. They have not attractive surroundings and equipment. They are also suffering from the fact that the children tend to leave at 15 instead of carrying on after that age. As more resources become available we can do a lot to get rid of those deficiencies in buildings and equipment.
When we begin to develop the technical and technological possibilities of the secondary modern school we shall get more children staying on after the age of 15, particularly if we are a little more generous in the matter of maintenance. I have seen this happen in one part of Middlesex and several other parts of the country, where there are good, new secondary modern schools and a technical stream running from the age of about 13 years, and where a positive degree of competition has begun among parents to get their children into them. There is no nonsense, no snobbish competition, no feeling of frustration and failure when the child goes to the secondary modern school instead of to the grammar school. So one of the main arguments always adduced by hon. Members opposite against the present system immediately disappears.
What could be a more satisfactory method of development? This is the method that has met all the educational advances which we have so far made, developing step by step from one institution to another, improving each as we go along to meet the new demands of the society in which we live. Is not that a better way than to destroy—and I repeat that it is destroying—the existence, the identity, the traditions and the advantages of the existing schools? Is it not much better to improve those which lag behind than to destroy those which are good? I do not believe that the parents of this country will have any doubt as to which is the better way.
This has been rather a political debate. When one is so near a General Election I suppose that is inevitable. I think hon. Members opposite will support me when I say that I have not on the whole been

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given to making party political speeches about education but have always tried to look at it objectively. Nevertheless, there have been one or two observations from the other side which cannot in justice be allowed to pass.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas)—who is unfortunately not at present with us—produced for about a quarter of an hour a series of statements which, while being just consonant with some of the facts, were yet as misleading as possible. The hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) was not, I thought, far away from him at times. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West said that Ministers on this side had been promising the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds and that although they had not got into the hundreds of millions they were still promising large, or fairly large, sums after the General Election.
Mr. Follick: He said a few pounds.
Mr. Maude: It is very interesting to compare what has been alleged against us with what has recently been happening in the Labour Party. About a year ago the Labour Party started promising things costing hundreds of millions of pounds. Their promises have been getting louder, larger and more irresponsible as their chances of being returned to office diminish. As this election campaign takes its course, I see no reason why that process should be reversed.
What neither the hon. Member for Cardiff, West nor the hon. Member for Fulham, East have really appreciated is the way in which the achievements of this Government in education have been a continuous and steady process during the last three and a half years. They talk as if my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) had indulged in an immediate outbreak of reaction, imposing savage cuts designed deliberately to cause the educational service to deteriorate, and as if my right hon. Friend the present Minister had then deliberately reversed her policy and gone forward making extravagant promises because the country was nearer to an Election.
To anyone who bothers to find out the facts, what a completely false picture that is. As my right hon. Friend has
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always been the first to say, what happened was that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side took over her office in October, 1951, she found that the position was very serious indeed. If there were not to be a very severe deterioration in education, the situation demanded drastic efforts. The building programme was most seriously overloaded. If anyone doubts that, he should look at the evidence given to the Select Committee on Estimates by the Hertfordshire Education Authority.
The fact is that there is real reason to believe that had not the moratorium on new starts been imposed we should not have been able to meet the demand for new school places during the few years immediately following 1951. The results are plain to see. Compare the records of schools finished before 1951 with those of schools finished after that date. It is all very well for the hon. Member for Fulham, East to say that the number of new school places completed last year was less than that of the year before, but what would have happened if as a result of there being no moratorium those hundreds of new schools had not been completed? There would have been an actual deficiency of places. The hon. Member would then have been the first to accuse us of irresponsible carelessness in not taking steps to ensure that those places were available which had been promised by our Socialist predecessors.
As it is, we have kept abreast of the demand for places for the children. It is much more important that those places should have been completed than that the numbers should have risen between 1951 and 1953 or that they should still be going up in the same proportion now. Hon. Members opposite should be a little careful in what they say about the future prospects for the size of classes. As they well know, the problem is very complicated. It is easy to talk too much about it and to shout too loud.
For example, if we took extravagant measures now to reduce the size of primary school classes we might find that it would be a source of embarrassment in the future because, as the bulge in the birth-rate moves from the primary to the secondary schools, the number of children at primary schools will at a certain time automatically fall. It may be much more important at that time that

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we should have in the primary schools the very best and most carefully selected teachers of the highest quality than that we should have a number which will then prove to be too large whose quality will be below what might have been possible.
My right hon. Friend has today given us the news—it is the most heartening news in the field of education that I can remember hearing since I first entered the House—that the demand for places in teacher training colleges exceeds by 3,000 the number of places available. We all know that to be true. I would not have believed four years ago that in 1955 I should be receiving letters from constituents about girls of 19 years of age, apparently with all the qualifications necessary for entering a teacher training college, being rejected, in one case by no less than eight different colleges. That is the sort of letter I am now getting. While I feel very much for a girl who has a teaching vocation yet cannot get into a teacher training college, I think it is a position in which we should not do anything but congratulate ourselves.
Do not let us—and I hope the teachers will agree with this—be rushed by this apparent plethora of potential recruits to teaching into diluting the standards of the profession when we have the chance of raising them. There was a period after the war when those standards fell. We now have a chance to raise them again to the best we have ever known. We should concentrate on that. The teachers obviously will not be the losers by it; it is a good trade union principle that the teachers, on the whole, must gain. Nor will the children lose. Nothing will better improve the prospects of the children than an improvement in the quality of the teachers. I do not expect necessarily a reduction in the size of classes from that; I believe the quality of the teachers to be even more important.
I am quite sure that my right hon. Friend is very much seized of the importance of this problem and that he realises as well as any of us the need to deal with it. Now we have improved prospects for the primary schools. They are now better than they have been since the war. Now we have more teachers of a higher quality and we have the race to fit the increased number of children into the schools almost won. From now on the pressure on the primary schools
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will be getting less, the number of teachers more, and the quality of teachers better. That will enable us at last to improve the quality of primary school education.
I know that it is important to reduce the size of classes, but that will come. On the basis of the improved primary education we have a chance to let the existing secondary education show what it can do. It has not had that chance because the stream coming from the primary schools was not as good as it might have been.
On the basis of that improved product coming from the primary schools, let us develop the system which was recommended by the Hadow Report and which was instituted by the 1944 Education Act. Let us build a secondary education system based on the traditions of established grammar schools and translated not merely through those schools but through new grammar schools created for new communities, and through secondary modern schools developed into institutions peculiarly British with immense potentialities for good and with a great contribution to make in a scientific age. Let us then see whether it will not be the case that British education will be the best in the world.
7.52 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Moyle: The most interesting part of the speech of the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) was that in which he spoke of the secondary modern schools. I can go substantially a good way with him on that aspect of our educational system because I believe that whether we like it or not, and I wish that it were otherwise, the majority of our school population are being educated today and will be educated for some time in secondary modern schools.
Indeed, the secondary modern school forms, practically speaking is the main basis of our educational system. Therefore, if the secondary modern school is to achieve what the hon. Member describes as something peculiarly British and one of the greatest adventures in modern education in this or any other country, we shall have to spend a little more money on secondary modern schools than we are spending on them now.
I have visited quite a number of secondary modern schools. I have found that,

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generally speaking, the striking difference between the secondary modern school and the grammar school is, first of all, in the buildings and equipment. If the secondary modern school is to contain school children up to the age of 16 or 17, greater facilities will have to be provided for practical education. Equipment and tools will have to be provided both to give the technically-minded boy or girl a suitable education and to provide a higher standard of academic education. Therefore, we first want better equipment both of schools and of the necessary tools to discharge the practical side of education if the secondary modern school is to fulfil its purpose for our children.
I should have thought that the Minister of Education would recommend to all local education authorities that there should be a scheme whereby, when a boy or girl leaves the secondary modern school for industry or for some other vocation, he or she should be possessed of a general school-leaving certificate stating exactly the young person's standard of intelligence and scholastic record throughout the school career so that when he or she applies for a post a prospective employer will have some knowledge of the educational bent and achievements of the person whom he proposes to employ.
I certainly think that it is a good thing to encourage complete understanding between the secondary modern school and the grammar school, and that where children show a very definite preference for, academic education they should be transferred to the grammar school to enable that bent to be developed, and vice versa from the grammar school to the secondary modern school when the educational bent is otherwise. Above all, if we are to achieve parity between the two schools, we must have the best teachers that are available to staff our secondary modern schools.
I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Ealing, South further than that, because I thought that his speech was essentially a party political speech, though it largely approved of my party's attitude towards the comprehensive school. The Minister is committed to the comprehensive school, just as we are on this side of the Committee. I have not yet heard the Minister turn down the principle of the comprehensive school.
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The only difference between the parties is as to the extent to which the comprehensive school system should be applied.
I must confess that the Minister's announcement today about university grants for students has somewhat interfered with the even tenor of my speech, because it was my intention to advocate a review of the existing university grants. After having heard what the Minister had to say about the revision of the basis of university grants for students, particularly those entering teachers' training colleges, I want to ask one or two exploratory questions. Now that the Minister has decided to uplift the grant to the student who is about to enter a teachers' training college, and who will now receive the same grant as is made to the student entering a university, will the Minister, in the interests of uniformity and of equity, consider applying the same principle to the student who is entering one of our technical colleges?
I represent a constituency where people are very largely engaged in heavy engineering. The bulk of the young people in my constituency are technically minded. I am continually asked why it is that when it is a matter of considering a grant for those who are anxious to secure the benefit of technical education, with a view to their becoming technologists or technicians, the same consideration is not given to them as is given to those who are proceeding to a university college. This is important, because unless we establish equity and extend that principle of uniformity which the Minister has now stated to be very desirable, we shall not develop the technical side of industry to the extent that we all so much desire.
The other point I wanted to put to the Parliamentary Secretary is this. What does the Minister propose to do to enforce the decision to which he has come as a result of the Committee's report to which he referred? How does he intend to get the local education authorities to accept his proposals? If, for example, he gets the local authorities to raise the grant to the teacher student, what does he propose to do about those local authorities—some still exist—who have not yet applied the recommendations to bring the existing major scholarship grants to university students up to the standard laid down some time ago by his predecessor?

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I also wish to raise another question which is equally important. I should like the hon. Gentleman to have a look at some of the training colleges and the initial costs that are imposed upon students and are laid down as a condition of entry. I would ask him, for example, to look at some of the colleges providing physical education. I am advised there is a dearth of physical education teachers. They are certainly very very important to the nation. But I was astonished when I received a statement of the conditions which are laid down for entry, for example, into Marsh's College of Physical Education, which comes under the administration of the Lancashire Education Committee.
I do not propose to read out the details which I have in my hand, but the Parliamentary Secretary might like to know that I have here the list of articles that a student must bring with her to the college, what the student will be asked to provide when she gets there, and also what the student will require as equipment for the purpose of discharging her obligation to the college as a student. I have had the list priced, and I would say that the cost is between £150 and £200. If my estimate is correct—and this is not a matter upon which the student can exercise any discretion; it is a condition laid down by the principal of the college on behalf of those in charge—then it is becoming far most costly to become a physical education teacher than it is to be a lawyer.
Now that the Minister has developed an expansive, electoral mood, I should like to ask him to do two things. The first one is, will he see to it that local authorities still lagging behind will conform to the standard which his predecessor laid down? Will he also bring into operation the increases which he proposes to pay so that a student will not suffer because he chooses a particular way in which to develop his educational career?
The second point I want to ask the Minister to have a look at is the conditions of entry to a number of these training colleges to see that they are educationally necessary and not merely a continuance of a snobbish conception of education. Finally, will he examine these initial costs and ascertain whether in fact they are necessary, and if so will
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he recommend to local authorities that they should rank as expenses upon which a grant may be determined? In short, will he see that the grant, having been made, will have regard to those initial costs and not merely be confined to standards of subsistence which is the usual basis upon which grants are made by local authorities?
8.5 p.m.
Mr. C. J. M. Alport: The hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) accused my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) on having made a party speech. I can assure him and other hon. Members on the other side that what we are anxious to do is to elucidate for our own benefit and for the benefit of the country generally exactly what is their conception about the future of the comprehensive school.
When my hon. Friend earlier said that the party opposite wished to destroy the grammar school there was an immediate outcry of disagreement. What, therefore, do they intend? Is it their policy that where a new secondary school is to be built it should be a comprehensive one? For instance, in a new housing estate, which requires additional secondary education, do they consider that it is right that that secondary education should take the form of a comprehensive school and, if it is, is the reason for that because they believe that the comprehensive school is a better form of education of a secondary nature than the existing three-stream school?
If this principle is to be applied by the party opposite to new schools that are being bunt, why logically do they refrain from applying that same principle to the other parts of the country which have already got a pattern of secondary education on what they would call that basis? If, on the other hand, they feel that the old system of education with the grammar school, the technical school and the secondary modern school, is appropriate to most of the country, why do they insist on applying the comprehensive principle to the new secondary schools which are to be built in the future?
I believe—and whether hon. Members are aware of the fact I do not know—that the idea of a comprehensive school

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is intended to appeal to the parents and less to the considered interests of the children, because as I understand the Education Act, 1944, the object of maintaining three separate types of education at the secondary stage is to try to ensure that every child will go through the type of education for which its talents and ability are most suitable.
Mr. Ede: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me where in the Education Act, 1944, he will find any reference to three separate types of education?
Mr. Alport: The right hon. Gentleman has the advantage of me in this case, because he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education during the time when the Education Act was being passed through this House, and I must confess I am less familiar with the details than he is. But I am quite clear that it has worked out that way, and if it has it must have been on the responsibility of the party opposite who were in power when the new system was introduced. In those circumstances, there is no doubt that it was the logical and proper view to adopt, and one which I would have thought was an integral part of the accepted practice of post-war education.
What will happen in the case of the comprehensive school? There is no doubt that if the policy of the party opposite is integrated and the old established and highly respected grammar school comes within the framework of the new comprehensive school, then in the future the old grammar school will, in fact, set the standard of the whole school. That may be a good thing, and in some cases it would be a very good thing, but there is no doubt that there will be as much difference in the minds of the people whose children go there between selection for the grammar school wing of the comprehensive school and selection for what one might call the modern wing of the comprehensive school as there is between selection for the modern secondary school at present and selection for the secondary grammar school.
I believe that what the policy of the party opposite will do, if it succeeds in producing anything at all, is to produce an illusion of equality of attainment amongst parents in respect of their children but will handicap the children them-
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selves. I therefore believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South and the Minister are absolutely right when they say that our policy should be to develop the secondary modern school as an element in the pattern of national education for the future.
In my constituency I have a new secondary modern school and an old-established Royal Grammar School, the latter dating from the days of Edward VI. The buildings of the old grammar school are unsuitable, to say the least, whereas the buildings of the new secondary modern school are ideal. There we have a very good comparison, and I can say without hesitation that, with its advantages in accommodation and so on, the modern school has created for itself a place in the esteem of the area through the part which it is playing in our educational world.
The grammar school has a different renown and esteem, it is true, but whether a child goes to St. Helena's, on the one hand, or the Royal Grammar School, on the other hand, although perhaps not a matter of indifference to the parents, at any rate it is not regarded as being a disadvantage by the parents or the children. I am quite certain that given a proper chance—and this is the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South—given the teachers, the accommodation and the equipment, and given, also, the support of public figures in politics and elsewhere, the modern secondary school can play a very important part indeed in the future of our pattern of education.
Perhaps I may say something further about a point raised by the Minister earlier. He said—and I am sure that hon. Members throughout the Committee will entirely agree—that one of the most important things we have to do now is to ensure that we obtain the highest quality of teachers available for all our schools—teachers who are qualified for their work and who in certain cases, particularly for science and mathematical subjects, are graduates.
I want to ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, who is to reply, whether he will again consider the representations made to him by the Graduate Teachers' Association recently about the new system of salaries in respect of responsibility and seniority. My hon.

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Friend knows that the Graduate Teachers' Association feels that under the system accepted by the Burnham Committee insufficient attention is paid to seniority as compared with the responsibility and the duties of the school teacher concerned. In this letter, which my right hon. Friend has seen, the Association says:
"We ask that the graduate allowance should begin at perhaps the existing £60 a year and should increase by annual increments, of, say, £10 to £250 at the top of the scale. With this would go responsibility allowances much the same as they are now in March, 1955, but codified from the practice of the best local authorities and applied countrywise."
I do not want to go any further into that point, but I believe that it is important that in this matter of ensuring that graduate teachers of the highest quality are available, attention should be paid to the problems in the schools created by the new system, which can cause difficulties amongst teachers who, although of greater seniority, are perhaps paid at a lower salary rate.
May I turn to a further point which is perhaps a little away from the general tenor of the debate? Whatever hon. Members may think about the educational system of this country, and particularly about the public schools, there is no doubt at all that the system of education at the public schools is held in the highest esteem by people in Commonwealth and Colonial Territories overseas. For instance, I know that every member of the staff of one High Commissioner's office here is attempting to get his child into a particular public school.
As my hon. Friend knows, at the moment it is extremely difficult for anyone who has not had his name put down for those schools at a very early age to obtain a vacancy, and there is therefore relatively little prospect of parents in Commonwealth countries who wish to send their children to English schools being able to do so.
I realise that the Minister is perhaps not in a position to issue instructions in this case, but I am quite certain that if it were known by the governors of the school concerned that they would be contributing to a continuing understanding between this country and Commonwealth territories, particularly Pakistan, Ceylon and India, by making it possible for parents living in those territories to send their children to public schools here, and
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if it were known that it would be of the greatest assistance and would be gratefully accepted by those parents, then the governors would co-operate.
I believe that in the whole pattern of understanding which has grown up between ourselves and fellow members of the Commonwealth, nothing has been more important than the fact that a great many of those who are in leading positions in Colonial and Commonwealth territories came to this country in their youth to be educated along with our own children and young people. Because relationships have changed in recent years, I believe it to be of even greater importance that that tradition should continue; and I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will find it possible to use his influence in any way that he can in order to ensure that that tradition of education is continued for the benefit of the unity of the Commonwealth.
8.20 p.m.
Mr. Edward Evans: I want to intervene for a very short time and take the Committee with me out of the main stream of educational thought which has dominated our discussion up till now into a little by-water of the educational world, the realm of the special schools in which I have spent the whole of my professional life. I want to say a little about some of the children, dealing with the different categories, and about the teachers.
Whatever claims the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Alport) may make for the public schools and other schools which catch the highlights, we in this country can claim that we have probably the finest system of special school education in the world. We have in large measure been the pioneers in building upon the great voluntary system which started a great number of these schools, particularly for the blind and deaf.
However, there are one or two anxieties which I feel about the system, and I should like to put one or two points to the Minister and ask for his help. They are rather technical points, and I hope the Committee will forgive me if I go into the technical aspect, because that happens to be what I want to talk about.
I want to ask the Minister about a phenomenon which has lately appeared in this field, and that is retrolental fibro-

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plasia, which attacks small children. There has been a larger incidence of infantile blindness than we have had for a very long period.
I entered the field of blind education a long time ago, and I recollect how from that time we found that gradually every year the incidence of juvenile blindness was decreasing. We found that the lovely Sunshine Homes developed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind were adequate to the needs of the unfortunate children who became afflicted with blindness in early youth. Latterly the incidence has increased and we have had to develop the service, in the fullest cooperation with the Ministry, naturally, but today there is grave doubt whether the provision is sufficient.
At the moment the children are in the nursery schools, but they will gradually pass into the blind primary schools. Is the Minister satisfied that in the blind primary schools there are sufficient places to accommodate them? I have been given disquieting figures which show that there will be a dearth of places. I hope the Minister will not say that if we add up all the vacancies in the country and set them off against the applications they balance or there is an excess of places. He knows very well that we cannot part a small blind child from its family in, say, the West of England and send it to Yorkshire. According to the Act, we have to provide accommodation within reasonable access of the child's home.
We are very pleased indeed that during recent years the bugbear of parental objection has been overcome. We find today that once the parent allows a physically handicapped child to go to one of our lovely new schools, objections are soon worn away and such parents become very much more apostles for the special schools than they were previously.
Is the Minister satisfied with the provision for secondary education for blind children? We have an excellent boys' public school at Worcester which lifts the public schools' chess championship every year and does not do so badly at rowing, and we also have a very fine public school for girls at Chorley Wood. However, is he satisfied with the provision for technical education? The number of professional opportunities for
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blind persons today, although it is increasing, is not enough to absorb the better types and more adventurous spirits which emerge from our schools. I should have thought that the Minister would have given very special attention to the provision of technical education in these special schools.
I have spoken about blind children, and the excellent nursery provision made for them. The picture is rather different in relation to other categories. What about the young deaf child? It is absolutely essential that the young deaf child should be brought under specialised education as early as possible so that he can learn how to develop speech, understand language and lip-reading and get out of the old classification of "the dumbie," the deaf and dumb child. The provision for nursery schools in the deaf world demands careful attention, and I hope, and feel sure, that the Minister will give assistance in this respect. We need to co-ordinate the services which are already available, and there are plenty of them. A great deal of courage is needed in meeting the demands of the deeds under which they are governed so that they may fulfil their function. The space is there and the teachers are there, but it is a matter of the function.
We have—I am proud to be a trustee of it—a first-class secondary grammar school for the deaf. I imagine it is one of few in the world. Our product is something of which we can be proud. However, in technical education we are lagging far behind. I want to take this opportunity of congratulating Lord Iveagh and his daughter, Lady Lennox-Boyd, upon providing at their own expense an experimental technical school for totally deaf boys. It is not for the hard of hearing or anything like that; it is for absolutely deaf boys who leave the primary schools. We look forward to the development of this venture.
A great deal more is needed. What about the girls? What about the great category of the hard of hearing, the children who still remain in our schools lagging behind? There is nothing which hinders a child's progress more than partial deafness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) will know, from his long experience in education, it is not long since such children were classi-

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fied as dull and backward, whereas they ought to have been given special attention in special schools. We look forward to hearing from the Minister about what is to happen in that respect. Another problem which is worrying teachers in deaf schools is the size of classes. I was horrified when I picked up the excellent Report of the Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers to read that, of the 478 classes for deaf children in the country, 210 are oversize. That is an appalling statement as it stands. There is an agitation on the part of the National College of the Teachers of the Deaf, the Deaf Children's Society and all informed persons connected with the work to reduce the size of classes. Those who have had experience of primary schools with classes of more than 50—I began my career by teaching a class of 90 children—would think that we needed to reduce the classes from 10 to a much lower figure, because an individual approach, is essential.
Another great problem we have to face much more realistically than we are doing concerns the child with a multiple handicap, the child who is educable but suffers not one disability, such as deafness or blindness, but a multiple disability, deaf blindness, epileptic deafness, epileptic blindness, the physically defective blind and deaf, and all those disabilities that might affect the ordinary child through such diseases as poliomyelitis and meningitis. We shall have to do a great deal to remedy this problem.
When I was reading this Report—and I take some responsibility for it, because I was called as a witness—I was very disturbed indeed to find the categorical terms in which it was laid down that the internal examinations conducted hitherto by the College of Teachers of the Blind and the National College for Teachers of the Deaf were to be abrogated and that after a certain date they were not to be held any more and that the qualifications for teaching the blind and the deaf were to be left to a university department. I hope that the Minister will think twice about that. A tremendous amount of technical knowledge and technical skill in this work has grown up and has been sustained by a really vocational spirit. There is available a fund of experience and knowledge in conducting these examinations, and it would be a pity, after the work has been successfully
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carried on for 50 years, that there should come a time when the project should be disbanded.
There is a great deal to be said for the university examination and the linking with normal training and the normal experience of teachers in ordinary schools. It is vital for the teacher to have some knowledge of the ordinary child, as his pupils will have to live in a normal world and will have to adapt themselves socially, economically and emotionally in the world of normal people. The teacher must be able to relate the child's problems to those of the normal child. These are problems which are agitating us at the present time.
There are many more problems I should like to elaborate, but I promised to be as short as I possibly could. All of this work done on behalf of these children deserves every encouragement and help, not least because it pays considerable dividends in happiness and contentment. I will conclude by reading from the end of the Report a tribute paid to the teachers in special schools. It is eloquent and very justified and, if I may be allowed to speak for the teachers in special schools, I should like to say how much they will appreciate the recognition in the Report of their services. It says:
"We cannot conclude our Report without expressing our admiration for the teachers in special schools who have given devoted and inspired service to handicapped children. To their work the realisation of the need for special training may ultimately be traced. Our recommendations should, therefore, be read as as tribute "—
a great deal of it sounds critical—
"to past and present teachers of handicapped children."
8.32 p.m.
Mr. Edward Short: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) is not in his place, because I wanted to comment on one or two points in his speech. He said something rather sensible at the beginning of his speech—a rare event so far as he is concerned, but I will not say anything about that. However, towards the end of his speech he said that a number of Labour-controlled local authorities throughout the country have introduced comprehensive schools because they have received directions from Transport House.

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I want to say that that is completely untrue. I was a member of a local authority for a number of years, and no Labour group on any local authority anywhere in the country ever receives instructions from anybody. It may happen in the Conservative Party, but certainly it does not happen in the Labour Party. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) made a very interesting point with which I disagree. He said that there was no such thing as a late developer.
Mr. Ede: He is one himself.
Mr. Short: I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Bath is in his place now. I know that he is interested in this topic of reading ability, and he said that apparent late development was due to the fact that these boys and girls were below the average in reading ability.
If I may say so with respect, he and my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Follick) have got their theory about reading ability the wrong way round. I do not know whether they know about infant schools, but I believe that the technique in our infant schools is probably the best of any teaching technique in any of our schools. In practice, almost all the children learn to read quite well in the infant schools, but for some reason or other a good many of them lose that ability later. My own theory is that children are losing the incentive to learn to read. There are so many comic papers and they replace the novel reading of other years. There are road signs and in many other ways the need to read words is being obviated.
Children nowadays can follow whole stories and understand them pretty well without seeing a written word anywhere. The hon. Member knows the educational publishing trade very well. He knows that there are a number of history and geography books which a child can follow from cover to cover without reading a single word, because they are done by means of clever diagrams and pictures. That may be the reason; I do not know. The fact is that in the infant school children learn to read but later, for some reason, that ability to read becomes impaired.
Mr. Pitman: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that the standard of
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reading at the infant school is good enough to enable a child to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered right up to the secondary school or to the end of the secondary school stage?
Mr. Short: What I said was pretty clear. When they leave the infant school most children can read fairly well, but later many of them perhaps do not lose the ability but the ability becomes impaired, largely through lack of practice outside school. That is my theory.
I want to deal briefly with the problem of selection, about which we have heard so much, and I want to deal with it in human terms. Very often we talk about these matters in purely technical jargon and we forget that we are dealing with boys and girls. I want to tell a little story of two boys. It is not fiction; it is perfectly true. It is the sort of story which is enacted in thousands of homes at this time of the year. I tell it because it illustrates what I believe is the biggest blot on our educational system. Indeed I believe that it is one of the big remaining social injustices.
I ask the Committee to visualise breakfast time at a house in Laburnum Grove. There is a knock on the door, and a long-awaited letter lies on the hall floor. The whole family watch with silent apprehension as the letter is torn open. Then, in an instant, the cloud of anxiety which has depressed the household for many months passes, because Peter has passed. But next door the cloud is not lifted. Indeed, in that house it is deepened. It becomes blackened with disappointment and anger because Paul has failed—disappointment with Paul, poor little chap, and anger with the unjust system which permits this cruel annual farce to continue.
Peter, who got in, and Paul, who did not, have come through the primary school together, but these two letters on the hall floor one morning in April mean the parting of the ways for them. Peter will probably enter one of the professions, and Paul will probably become a hewer of wood or a drawer of water. By and large, that is the pattern. In ability and personal qualities there is not a hair's-breadth between the two boys, but Peter gained more marks than Paul in a written examination which was held on a cold, frosty, bleak morning last December.

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Why did Peter gain more marks? Paul is rather a nervous boy and, because he is nervous, he probably got tummy ache on the morning of the examination; but probably the real reason was that Peter's parents were well enough off to send him for four nights a week to one of the professional coaches who are to be found in every city and in every suburb. They are now making a very good thing out of this examination and their efforts have reduced the present system of selection to an absurdity.
Teachers' organisations and local authorities have made considerable efforts, but quite unsuccessfully, to stop this practice. All agree that so long as selection is by examination nothing will stop the keen or the opulent parent from having his child crammed for the examination. After all, who is to prevent any knowledgeable parent from coaching his own child, and who is to prevent the primary school teacher from easing up a bit on some subjects and concentrating on the three Rs for a few months before the examination?
For many years the teachers of this country were paid by results, and the old fear of injury to one's professional prospects because of poor examination results still, I am afraid, stalks many schools. Coaching for the selection examination has now developed to such an extent that the normal, intelligent child who does not receive special tuition in English, arithmetic and the so-called intelligence tests, either at the junior school or elsewhere, has very little chance indeed of securing a grammar school place.
The brilliant child and the seriously backward child present no problems in selection. Almost any kind of test, oral or written, would pick them out. But most of our children are neither very backward nor very brilliant. Most of our children belong to neither of these clearly defined groups, and it is in this vast, intermediate range of normal, healthy, intelligent children between the two extremes that the present system causes such great injustice.
Some day, I believe, parents will rebel against an educational system which is guilty of such false diagnosis of the educational needs of so many of their children. Until they do, I think that the parents of Paul—that is the boy who did not get in—should take consolation from
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the fact that the local authority's decision about their boy does not mean a thing so far as his real worth is concerned. Personal qualities such as honesty, truthfulness, perseverance, and loyalty are infinitely more important than the ability to perform tricks with figures. The manipulation of figures is no more an indication of character than the manipulation of balls by a sea lion in a circus.
And Peter?—the boy who did get in. All I can say about Peter is that I hope that his fond parents have not launched him in the deep end of the educational pool before he can swim. I think that the parents of Peter and Paul would do well to remember that where a child starts the race in life is not very important. The important thing is his position at the end of the day. The nation would not, I hope, tolerate any great wastage of its coal, steel or agricultural land, yet it allows this rigid selection by examination at the age of 11 for a tripartite system of secondary education to cause this tragic annual wastage of the inherent ability of so many of our children.
The fact that the Minister mentioned that grammar school selection takes as many as 40 per cent. of the children in Merionethshire and only 10 per cent. in Gateshead is surely in itself evidence of this wastage of intellectual power and ability. The Labour Government which will come into office after 26th May—
Mr. Cyril Osbome: Oh.
Mr. Harold Davies: The hon. Member has only just come in.
Mr. Osborne: I came in while the hon. Gentleman was asleep.
Mr. Short:—will end this waste of the nation's intellectual resources by ending selection at the age of 11. We shall create a secondary system of education in which all our children, whether they be brilliant, normal, or backward, will be able to develop their talents, however many they may be, to the highest possible degree for the common good.
8.45 p.m.
Mr. Ronald Bell: I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short), and I suppose that all hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will agree with the general principles which he enunciated. In

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politics, however, one is generally faced with practical problems and the necessity to find a solution of them. I do not think that there are any such clear-cut solutions as the hon. Member suggested.
I recognise, as did the hon. Member, as did my right hon. Friend this afternoon, and as other hon. Members have done, the difficulties which exist about the 11-plus examination. I do not think that we can avoid examinations in a child's life, nor can we avoid certain consequences dependent upon them. We have to try to make sure that they do not make or mar the child permanently. I think that the 11-plus examination causes a certain amount of injustice at the present time.
In some counties at any rate, that arises out of the nature of the examination. I am not happy about the intelligence test which figures so prominently in the examination in some counties. In one county in particular, I know that the intelligence test is not merely a part of the examination, but is, as it were, the pons asinorum. It is taken separately, and unless the child passes the intelligence test, be is not eligible to sit for the rest of the examination.
That appears to me to be very undesirable, because children vary among themselves. It is particularly undesirable in the case of which I am thinking, because the intelligence test is based upon a time factor. That is to say, the child has to answer certain questions, problems or conundrums in a given time, or else it may lose marks unless something is done in a certain number of seconds.
Lots of boys who will develop into very acute and useful citizens are, nevertheless, easily flustered when young, and cannot give of their best against a time schedule. Even if an intelligence test ought to be given in this examination, I am quite certain that it should not be a qualifying element; and I am equally certain that the time factor in it should not be very important. That is just a comment on the examination itself.
When a child has passed, or has not passed, the examination, I do not think it should be the last word on the subject. It is important that a child who develops unexpectedly should have the chance of moving from the secondary modern
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school to the grammar school, or perhaps vice versa. I speak briefly on this, because I do not wish to interrupt the agreed schedule of the debate.
The only way we can solve the problem with which we are faced is to try to achieve what the Education Act calls "parity of esteem" for these different kinds of schools. I do not think it matters greatly whether we separate the grammar school children into the grammar schools, or keep them all together in one big school and separate them out in the academic stream and the practical stream—in my belief and experience we shall still have the same kind of feeling between the streams of children; and we should avoid the feeling that those not in the academic stream are in some way inferior and have, as it were, been weeded out.
It should not be difficult to avoid that in the future, because we know that there is a tremendous and increasing shortage of scientifically trained people; not merely scientifically trained people but, more especially, of those trained in the practical application of science—applied science. It should be peculiarly easy in the years ahead to give great prestige to applied science in all its branches. I think my right hon. Friend has said, not perhaps today, but on other occasions, that we may expect to see greater emphasis in the secondary modern school—or the modern side of the comprehensive school—I do not mind which term we use—on science, not only applied science, but pure science.
Let us say that in some area a child is particularly able and passes the examination and is in the grammar school; but either develops particular ability for natural science or else wishes to direct his career in that way. He might then actually wish to be transferred from the grammar school to the secondary modern school, because it might be recognised that that school had a peculiarly valuable training in either applied or pure natural science. I am quite sure that is the only way we shall get "parity of esteem."
It is most important, when at least three-quarters of the nation's children are to be educated in secondary modern schools or on the non-grammar side, that they should not feel it is a second-best kind of education. We should make them feel proud of it and feel they are

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in something equally as good as the grammar side.
I hope, also, it will not be spoiled by excessive transfers from the secondary modern schools to the grammar schools for if we are to keep creaming off the best from the secondary modern schools we shall destroy morale in them. We should not carry the transfers too far; the opportunity—the flexibility—should be there, but basically we should aim at building up the reputation of the secondary modern schools.
8.52 p.m.
Mr. Ede: The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell), in all but the last two minutes of his speech, made what seemed to me the soundest educational speech we have heard from hon. Members opposite, but I think his last two minutes rather spoilt the good impression he had made up to that stage.
Sanderson, the great headmaster of Oundle, said:
"The school should be a microcism of the world we would like to have."
That always seemed to me the best ideal to set before a school. In the school the child, for the first time, comes into relationship with a wider community than the family. It is essential that, when getting into the wider community, he should find something which is definitely leading him towards the life he will have to live as long as God spares him on the earth. Judged by that test, very few schools live up to that ideal.
A system of education which divides children at the age of 11 into little groups, one of which is to concentrate on grammar—I was astounded when I heard from the Minister this afternoon that he expects the great bulk of science teaching for the advanced scientists to be done in the secondary modern school—
Sir D. Eccles: Nothing of the kind.
Mr. Ede: I took the trouble to take down what the right hon. Gentleman said: "In meeting the demand for the scientific age the main burden will fall on the primary and secondary modern school." That is what the right hon. Gentleman said.
Sir D. Eccles: I said the main burden would fall on the maintained primary and secondary schools; I did not say the
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secondary modern. I was making a distinction between the State-assisted system and the independent schools. It is in the State-assisted system that we are going to produce the main quantity of those who are capable of meeting the demands of our age.
Mr. Ede: I am very glad to have got that point cleared up because the idea that was being adumbrated by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South that pure science and applied science are to be taken in the secondary modern school and that a boy who showed signs of ability in them should be transferred from the grammar school to the secondary modern school is, to my mind, a completely disastrous outlook on the whole of this problem.
Mr. R. Bell: I really did not say that. I said I saw no reason why the secondary modern schools should not also seek to achieve distinction in pure science, so that in some areas a boy would feel he would rather be transferred to a secondary modern school.
Mr. Ede: No, the hon. Gentleman cannot get away with that. He definitely talked about the boy in the grammar school asking to be transferred.
I want to deal with that point because, in several of the speeches from the other side of the Committee, the grammar school has been regarded as an exclusive unit which it is necessary we should preserve for its own sake. It was the difficulty that presented itself during the earlier years of the nineteenth century, when, in too many cases, the grammar schools wanted to remain places where only the classical tongues were taught. In fact, in 1805, Lord Eldon said that it was contrary to the trust deed for Leeds Grammar School to have any modern studies, and, for the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the grammar schools, through various devices, had to escape from the exclusiveness into which they had been pushed by their trustees. The grammar school today, as compared with Lord Eldon's conception of the grammar school, is certainly something approaching what he would have regarded—and with great horror—as a comprehensive school.
After all, the greatest scientist of the nineteenth century was Charles Darwin,

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and I take this note from his son's biography of him in the "Dictionary of National Biography ":
"In 1817, he went to a day school kept by Mr. Case, Minister of the Unitarian Chapel where, as a boy, he attended service. In the summer of 1818, he attended as a boarder at Shrewsbury School under Dr. Butler. Here, the teaching was kept within the narrowest classical lines, and, according to his own estimation, the only education that he got during his boyhood was from some private lessons in Euclid and from working at chemistry in an amateur laboratory fitted up by his brother in a toolhouse at home. This latter study met with disapproval and even public reproof from his schoolmaster."
The successor of Butler at Shrewsbury was Kennedy, who was there for 30 years, and typical of his attitude was that he refused the customary half-holiday for a First gained by an ex-pupil of the school at one of the two ancient universities, because it was only in science.
I am quite sure that on both sides of the Committee, we are now agreed that science cannot be put into that position in the educational world, and, as the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South said, the application of science in a great many skilled practical trades is now a thing which we must expect from an increasing number of the citizens of the country. We have to see to it that all studies that fit a person to discharge his appropriate functions in a highly specialised community shall be held in honour in the educational service, and that what we have to ask of the child, as I am quite sure in our adult experience we ask of the man, is that he will give of his best, according to his particular aptitude.
The hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Alport) said that the Education Act, 1944, established the tripartite system in education. If the Minister inquires in the office he will find—so I was told not many months ago—a paper that I wrote in 1943 in which I declared my disbelief in the tripartite system as an adequate basis for post-war education.
I would quote what the present Chancellor of the Exchequer said, as President of the Board of Education, in paragraph 17 of the White Paper on Educational Reconstruction, published in 1943, and debated in the House of Commons in that year. He said.
"There is nothing to be said in favour of a system which subjects children at the age of 11 to the strain of a competitive examination
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on which, not only their future schooling, but their future careers may depend."
That is the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, aided and abetted by myself as Parliamentary Secretary. I have no doubt that the present Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, coming from the same school and college as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will aid and abet the Minister and see that he goes on the right road. The White Paper goes on:
"Apart from the effect on the children, there is the effect on the curriculum of the schools themselves. Instead of the junior schools performing their proper and highly important function of fostering the potentialities of children at an age when their minds are nimble and receptive, their curiosity strong, their imagination fertile and their spirits high, the curriculum is too often cramped and distorted by over-emphasis on examination subjects and on ways and means of defeating the examiners. The blame for this rests not with the teachers but with the system."
I had to defend that paragraph in the House of Commons and I felt, as I feel tonight, that the first test of the success of the Education Act, 1944, was and is how far the difficulties and dangers in that quotation have been lessened by the subsequent administration of the Act.
The Act of 1944 is tripartite in that it says that there shall be three progressive stages of education: primary, secondary, and further. That is the only definition to be found in the Act on the division of education. Primary education was to be up to the age of 11 and secondary was from 11 onwards as long as the child remained full-time at school. Further education was beyond the time when the child left school, whether it went to the university or into industry.
On this side of the Committee we still believe that that is the appropriate division of education and that an attempt to fasten labels on particular schools and make them exclusive, so that children with only a limited range of faculties find themselves there, is a defeat of a sound democratic education. We are, therefore, disappointed at the action which was taken by the previous Minister of Education when she used her powers of direction to prevent an experiment being carried out by the greatest local education authority in the world.
Dame Florence Horsbrugh: I think that the right hon. Gentleman has made a mistake. He knows the Act very well.

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and knows there was no case of using powers of direction. As in many other Acts the decision rests with the Minister. I am glad to say that during the whole of the time I was at the Ministry I never once used powers of direction.
Mr. Ede: At any rate the power which the right hon. Lady used was as effective as the power of direction. She declined to allow the experiment.
There has been a lot of talk on the other side of the Committee about suppressing grammar schools—wiping them out. I believe that the future of the grammar school lies in the twentieth century, as it did in the nineteenth, in its steady expansion so as to bring into the most liberal atmosphere as wide a range of our children as possible. That, I believe, will be the future of the grammar schools. As time goes on, the grammar schools will themselves desire that that should take place.
I gather that the right hon. Gentleman now regards a dual rather than a tripartite system as being probably the future; that there will be, except in the most exceptional areas, no new technical schools established that will be technical alone. There again, perhaps that means that we shall have what are called grammar-technical, the kind of school which I happen to have in my own constituency, where about half the pupils are grammar and half technical, or what is called technical modern, as at a school which I had the honour recently of opening jointly with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his constituency. So far as immediate development is concerned, that is more likely to be the case, even under this Government, than to have separate grammar, technical, and modern schools.
As that expansion takes place I am quite certain we shall find that there will be a move from both sides towards covering the widest range possible. This examination at 11-plus is very wasteful in two ways. It lets through a lot of children who ought not to get through on any real educational basis. The hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) said that in his youth he was very good at passing examinations. He warned us against the boys or girls who run a bit above form in examinations.
The Minister alluded to occasions when he and I have been on Epsom Downs—we have all been trying to find that sort
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of horse—but I am not sure, as I think the hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlton hinted, that that kind of child ought to be encouraged, for I think we put a premium more often on precosity in those cases than on any genuine intellectual merit. Those get through who are admitted by the grammar schools themselves to be a certain amount of dead weight.
Mr. Pickthorn: I am not trying to score off the right hon. Gentleman at all, but I think he slipped and said not quite what he meant. He seemed to say that more often than not in the 11-plus examination the successful ones were those who were merely precocious. I am sure he did not mean that.
Mr. Ede: I certainly did not mean that. I do not think that I used any words that implied it, but I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for interrupting me if anything I said seemed to imply that.
There are a certain number of boys and girls who get a tremendous sense of achievement from getting into this exclusive organisation. Having got in, they are inclined to sit back and feel that the achievement of their lives has been accomplished. But there is something even worse. There are a number of children who are excluded from one reason or another through this examination who would be infinitely better value as an investment of the nation's resources than the little group of children to whom I have alluded.
The "Manchester Guardian" of 4th March, referring to the Ministry of Education pamphlet, "Early Leaving," said:
"… the figures indicate that you cannot accurately assess a boy's probable academic capacity at sixteen (or at eighteen) by means of an assessment, however accurate, of his capacity at eleven. And if boys (or girls) who just scrape in at eleven plus often do pretty well six or seven years later, there are probably more than we thought who just fail at eleven plus, but who would have done quite well—better than many of those who then passed."
Mr. Osborne: How do they know?
Mr. Ede: Of course, they do not know and that is the whole point.
At 11 most of the boys of my generation meant to be engine drivers. Today, they mean to be space-ship navigators. To make this selection at 11 years of age and then virtually decide that this boy will go to the black-coated profession and

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that boy will go into one of the skilled trades, if he can do pretty well in the secondary modern school, and, if he cannot, will do the work, is not the basis on which to found an industrial democracy. To segregate at that early age the black-coated professions from the foremen and the men who will have to apply the scientific theories which the others work out is—
Mr. Osborne: Nonsense.
Mr. Ede: I thank the hon. Member. I would not have been so rude myself, but at any rate there is one hon. Member opposite who, after today's debate, will be renouncing the Whip and will be inquiring whether he can become a Labour candidate.
May I use myself as a horrible example? My great nieces and great nephews who are now sitting for this examination regard me with great awe because they have been told that I passed in 1895. In the whole county of Surrey, 32 places in grammar schools were offered and there were 64 candidates. I passed number 32 on the list. That was the advantage of being trained at Epsom. Although I was only a selling plater, I managed to get among the colts. In the last year for which I had any responsibility, as an alderman of Surrey, for this examination, 900 places were offered—some advance on 32—but there were 9,000 candidates. I should have had a good view of that race from Tattenham Corner. Just fancy, my proper place in that list would have been 4,500.
That is the kind of thing that is constantly in the minds of parents, and that is what makes this examination such a bugbear for the child. The astonishing thing is that very often the better the family from nearly every other point of view, the worse it is for that child. I cannot think that this great country can afford thus to gamble with its most precious raw material, the brains and the character of its rising generation.
It is all very well to say that we are trying to destroy the secondary modern school. We are not. We are hoping to see every single school, no matter what labels foolish administrators may put on them, being charged with the duty given in the Education Act to educate each child according to his age, ability and
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aptitude. We have passed from the Act of 1870 at last, for it says we were to educate a child in three subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic. We now say it is not the subject to be taught that is to be the criterion of the teacher's efforts. It is to be the individual ability and aptitude of each child in the class, and no limit should be put on the possibility of any school that caters for the child of over 11 years of age. All the while where we have a secondary modern school without a grammar school stream in it, there should be an opportunity for the child who shows the ability that the grammar school stream demands to get the full benefit of his abilities and whatever prestige is available at the end of his school career.
The aim of education, as it is being modernised to give recognition to a great many abilities and to aptitudes which we did not recognise in the past, should be applied to the secondary modern school, and no secondary modern school should be debarred from giving any child who shows sufficient ability, even for one of the shorthand certificates of the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman), the opportunity of getting it. One of the few examinations I ever failed was to try to get one of his grandfather's certificates. How useful it would have been if I could have taken down the right hon. Gentleman's words in shorthand.
The comprehensive school, so-called, I believe for the reasons I have given this evening, is the logical outcome of our present system and the demand that our highly-specialised scientific life will make in the future. Just as the grammar school prides itself as much today on getting a First in science at the university as on getting a First in classics, so there will come a time when it will also pride itself on men and women who started their lives in it, spent their secondary school lives there, and went on to great technological institutions and there learned to apply some of the theories which they learned in the laboratory and the lecture room.
It will not destroy any other school. As time goes on, the other schools will expand until they develop into it. What we say, as a party, is this: where we have the possibility of widening the range of any school, immediate opportunity

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should be taken to give it a chance to show what it can do.
The right hon. Gentleman made a speech at Scarborough. In fact, I heard him make two speeches there. One was good, the other was a post-prandial speech of which I did not think very much, because in it he seemed to say that he intended to restrict certain experiments in the employment of visual aids, which I regard as one of the most important things for our education service to undertake.
Then, of course, he made this famous statement in the other speech:
"We are all working-class now and tomorrow we shall all be able to enjoy a share of the culture and leisure that used to be the prerogative of the few."
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has seen the comment which was passed on that statement by one of the writers in the "Schoolmaster." It was:
"It was perhaps unfortunate that the effect of this was spoiled by Sir David's choice of an illustration of this movement of all classes towards the working-class. It may be significant that full employment has resulted in a shortage of 'nannies' and that well-to-do parents now have to bring up their babies themselves. But there must have been many delegates who took a fleeting mental survey of the children who attend their school and in doing so failed to see how the sons and daughters of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker have been brought appreciably nearer in social status or educational opportunity to the products of Eton, Harrow and Roedean by the fact that in early childhood the latter now have their nappies changed by their Mums. The talk about nannies made one wonder how much Sir David really knows about the kind of children who attend local authority schools."
Sir D. Eccles: Quite a lot.
Mr. Ede: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does. He is going to woo them shortly.
I want to say this, as much to myself as to the right hon. Gentleman: I believe that the English boy and girl is very much of the same order, no matter where his or her home happens to be in the social hierarchy. After all, read Cobbett. He denounced as the nouveaux riches the people who are now being pushed out by those who make big capital gains at the present moment. This nation moves up and down.
Sir D. Eccles: Three generations.
Mr. Ede: I am not going to get into abstruse mathematics like that with the right hon. Gentleman.
We have in our nation, in every group, great resorvoirs of ability—some inherited, some acquired—and a high sense of the duty which this country has to the world. We believe that our education system should recognise that that is a fact, and that every child should get, in the great words of the Education Act, 1944, education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude. As far as possible he should get it in an atmosphere where he meets on equal terms children of very varying aptitudes and abilities. Between them they have to determine whether we lost the wars of this century or not. It is to the extent to which they can live up to the highest ideals which our educational service exists to implant that we shall know in some other state how far our efforts have been successful.
9.26 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Dennis Vosper): In the first place, I should like to be associated with my right hon. Friend's expression of regret at the absence today of the hon. Member for Itchen (Mr. Morley). During my three years of enforced idleness, I very much enjoyed his contributions to these debates.
To me the debate comes as a welcome surprise. It is a surprise because my right hon. Friend, my hon. Friends and I did not expect to be given such a favourable opportunity for deploying the developments in education during the last year. It is welcome because—I think that hon. Members opposite will agree with me here—we cannot have too many opportunities for discussing education. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend said on another occasion, very often those who are responsible for the provision and service of education are not always sufficiently ready to display their wares in public or to attract the support of the public which they need and deserve. The debate has provided us with another opportunity of surveying the achievements, as I believe them to be, and discussing the problems which admittedly remain. I very much welcome the stimulating intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn). I am sure that my right hon. Friend and all hon. Members will support

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his plea for the increased purchase and use of books in schools.
I want to begin on a non-controversial note by dealing with a subject raised by the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Edward Evans), that of handicapped children, which features rather less in our debates than we would at times wish. I need not remind hon. Gentlemen opposite than the 1944 Act brought about a fundamental change in the attitude to educating the handicapped, in that it included them for the first time in the main body of the Act. The local education authority is today required to secure that provision is made for pupils suffering from any disability of mind or body by providing education either in special schools or otherwise.
I emphasise "otherwise," because it never was the intention of the Act—I am sure that the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will bear me out—that all handicapped children should be educated in special schools. Indeed, the principle followed today is that children should as far as possible grow up in the normal schools and in the home environment so that they may be better fitted to take their place in the normal world.
It is with this in mind that one might look at the present position of special schools, to which the hon. Member for Lowestoft referred. There are now no fewer than 60,000 children in these schools, and 16,000 of them have been accommodated since the advent of the Act. No less than 37 per cent. of the schools have been provided during this period; that is, 37 per cent. of the special schools in existence today have been created since the war, and of them 44 have been created during the last year. I believe that this is no mean achievement.
There are three recent developments in this field which the Committee should note. In the first place there has been recently a series of successful regional conferences, because it is felt—this is not a new idea—that resources should be pooled. We have gone one stage further by setting up a Standing Committee to watch the position in each area. In the second place there is today increasing emphasis on the desirability of day school provision as opposed to boarding schools and of
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treating handicapped children at home as far as possible. Thirdly—I say this with respect to the remarks of the hon. Member for Lowestoft—we are, in many categories, in sight of making good the shortage of special school provision and of equating supply to demand.
In recent months there have been surveys of children awaiting admission to special schools and, with the exception of those in the categories of educationally sub-normal and maladjusted, there is reason to believe that in a comparatively short space of time sufficient accommodation will be available for all of them. That is why my right hon. Friend has recently drawn the special attention of local authorities to the need to provide additional accommodation for the educationally sub-normal, and indeed in this year's programme no less than 8,000 places are in course of construction. I have no doubt that as these places become available, local authorities will increase their degree of ascertainment, and it is in this category that greater progress still needs to be made.
The hon. Member for Lowestoft asked me three questions about the education of blind children. He referred to those suffering from retrolental fibroplasia. I have a little experience of this, because I was fortunate enough to address the College of Teachers of the Blind only last Friday. It was then my information—and it is today—that we have sufficient accommodation in hand to accommodate any increase that will result from what is a temporary misfortune, but I share his fear that there may be a certain unbalance of provision between the North and the South of England, which is a matter my right hon. Friend is watching.
He then asked me if I was satisfied that there was sufficient secondary technical accommodation for blind children. This is a point to which attention is in fact being given. In the third place he referred to the education of deaf children. A survey of deaf and the partially deaf has recently been carried out by the Ministry. It revealed that there are sufficient places to accommodate all those who will need admission, but that some reorganisation will be necessary, particularly to separate the deaf from the partially deaf. In all this I have in mind the need to reduce the size of classes.

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I join with the hon. Member for Lowestoft in paying tribute to the teachers in handicapped schools. I have had some dealings with these in the last few months, and I am certain that the service they give brings great credit to the teaching profession in general. I think that the hon. Member suggested that the Report of the Advisory Council recently published brings some recognition of that fact. That Report is being considered by my right hon. Friend at the moment and the particular point he mentioned will be very carefully considered before any decision is made.
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) asked me about the position of school meals. During the last year the number of schools without a meal service of any kind has been reduced by no less than 106 to the number of 693. That is a reduction of 15 per cent. in one year, it is our intention to continue the progressive reduction in the number of schools that have no meal service at the moment, and more particularly to replace unhygienic and dilapidated canteens.
My right hon. Friend said that I would say something about a matter which has not featured much in our debate today—the Ashby Report on Adult Education. All Members of the Committee will be aware that my right hon. Friend has announced his acceptance of almost all its recommendations. Therefore, I would only say that my impression is that those concerned have welcomed the Report as leaving the way clear for those in adult education to rediscover some first principles and to respond to the needs of small voluntary groups seeking liberal education. I think that they would be the first to agree that this has not always been the case in recent years.
So that the service may take full advantage of its renewed purpose, my right hon. Friend, in addition to permitting higher fees and salaries for certain tutors, hopes to provide grants for a strictly limited expansion next autumn in a few selected areas where there is special need. He has also made it clear that he expects a further contribution towards the higher costs either by an increase in fees or by some other means. Revision of the regulations is now being discussed with the responsible bodies.
The first of the main groups of subjects discussed today is possibly that of techni-
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cal education. Various hon. Members have stressed the importance of it. My right hon. Friend in recent utterances has shown the importance he attaches to it, as he did in his closing remarks today. I would direct attention to three recent developments. First, the very considerable increase in provision for building technical colleges. My right hon. Friend intervened to give a figure in reply to the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart). In fact it represents an increase of no less than 50 per cent. over last year's figure. While I share his view that that is by no means sufficient in itself, an increase of 50 per cent. in one year is a considerable advance.
Secondly, questions have been asked about the operation of the 75 per cent. grant paid for certain selected courses. Five hundred and fourteen courses have been approved, but that is not the limit and further courses can be approved if they qualify. This gives some idea of the extent to which we are developing the major technical colleges to play their part alongside the universities.
The hon. Member for Workington asked a series of questions at this stage. He asked about instalment building. He raised the question on the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates. A full reply was issued by my right hon. Friend's Department. The recent increased building programme for technical colleges has enabled us to get round the point about instalment building to a large extent, although it still remains necessary for a very large project to be sanctioned by instalments. The hon. Gentleman asked whether grants or advances could be made on a five-year basis. I am afraid that, for obvious reasons, it is not possible to plan on a five-year programme.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about teachers of science and mathematics. As he knows, this has been very much in my right hon. Friend's mind. The position is that there are today 10,900 graduate teachers of science and mathematics in our schools. To fill our requirements that number should rise by 1960 to 14,100. At the present rate of increase that is not likely to occur, and it is for that reason that my right hon. Friend has taken and hopes to take further steps to accelerate the increase.
There is one further development in technical education. That is the question

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of sandwich courses, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) referred in his excellent contribution to the subject of technical and technological education. My right hon. Friend does look forward to considerable development in this field and co-operation between industry and education.
Mr. Peart: I asked a specific question. Could we have the Government's intention on the question of the academic status of the teachers in technical colleges?
Mr. Vosper: The hon. Member asked a very large number of questions, but I have not the time to reply to all of them, and I have a question from the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon) with which I want to deal. The hon. Lady suggested in her opening remarks that further education in industry was a thing not yet contemplated, but the figure for day releases by employers is increasing all the time, and the figure for last year was 326,000. That to my mind is an encouraging sign.
I should like to stress that this field of technical education, at all levels, to me seems most important, and it is in fact the alternative road to success which my right hon. Friend has mentioned for those who do not enter grammar schools and for those who do not enter a university. Full attention will be paid to everything that has been said today.
I come to the question of school building and the size of classes. The hon. Lady asked me a lot of questions and for a lot of figures. She complained that she found the various figures issued by the Ministry somewhat confusing, but I feel that to some extent she has her hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) to blame for the series of questions which he has put on that point. The question which she asked me I think can best be answered by these figures—that during the three years which she had in mind the number of juniors and infants in maintained schools rose by 617,000 and in the same period the average size of junior and infant classes rose only from 34· 3 to 35· 6. But for 1955 onwards there will be a steady improvement, and the figures which she will see for this year will in fact, according to present information, show a reduction in
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the size of primary classes. This rate will continue, until in 1961 we should reach the position when there need be no more than 40 children in any class.
In the senior schools during the same period the average size of class has dropped from 30· 1 to 29· 5, and in view of the fact that during the three years in question the largest part of the bulge in the school population has come into our schools, I do not consider a rise of 1· 3 in the junior schools and a drop of 0· 6 in the senior schools at all a bad achievement. Indeed, even if the hon. Lady does not like the figures of the average size of classes, whichever figure she chooses will, I think, show equally good results.
The building programme which we inherited in 1951–52 was of the order of £45 million for primary and secondary schools. The building programme which my right hon. Friend recently approved for 1955–56 is £60 million, which is an increase of 33 per cent., although I realise that part of that is discounted by the increase in prices.
If the hon. Lady asks me to give the figures for contracts completed, which are possibly the most important statistics, or the number of new schools under construction, I think she will find that the figures are equally favourable to the Government. The hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart) suggested there had recently been a reduction in the number of places completed. That is perfectly obvious, in view of the fact that there is now a rapid switch from primary to secondary, and of course secondary places make a much larger demand upon resources.
Many hon. Members have joined in the debate on the pattern of secondary education. As they know, that is a debate which continues far beyond the confines of this Chamber. But my information, from reading the Press, and particularly the educational Press, is that my right hon. Friend's policy of selection for everybody has found a wide measure of support among those interested in education.
Among those who look at this not from the angle of the expert there are some who—as perhaps did the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne,

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Central (Mr. Short)—look at the worse possible case, the case of the old all-age school with no facilities for science or any other technical course. Of course, no one wishes to be selected for that type of school. But those schools are rapidly disappearing under the policy of my right hon. Friend, and in their place are the new secondary modern schools with room for technical courses—perhaps with an agricultural bias.
I suppose I am fortunate in having one in my own constituency which my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) opened two years ago. Again I may be fortunate, but it is my experience that parents in my constituency are quite anxious to have their children selected for this promising school. As I understand it, it is this sort of venture that hon. Members opposite wish to destroy, as they do the grammar schools.
Mr. G. Thomas: No.
Mr. Vosper: My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) made this point with clarity.
In my constituency I have a grammar school which serves the same area. But it is five miles from the secondary modern school, and I cannot understand how hon. Members opposite propose to fit those two schools into a comprehensive pattern. A number of my hon. Friends have dealt with the alternative of the comprehensive school, and I do not propose to repeat their arguments. The question of size—what is considered to be the optimum and necessary size of a comprehensive school—has been discussed. My information is that we cannot run an adequate school of comprehensive proportions with less than 1,200 children.
I wish to know whether hon. Members opposite feel that they have the support of the teaching profession in this venture. I wonder whether they are certain that our limited supply of experts would be best used in a comprehensive school and not in the wider pattern of schools envisaged by my right hon. Friend. Again, I am not convinced—
Mr. Moyle: Is it not a fact that there are a number of comprehensive schools already running with a school population of about 600?
Mr. Vosper: That is true, but I suggest that in many cases they suffer from the defect of not being able to run a sixth form satisfactorily. Indeed, the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East, quoted at some length from Dr. Robert Pedley. I do not know whether he is a supporter or an advocate of the comprehensive school—perhaps the hon. Lady knows. But she quoted him earlier today as being in support of that policy. I have found Dr. Pedley to deal with this problem of the sixth form in these words—I am quoting a more recent article which appeared in the "Schoolmaster" within the last six weeks:
"The comprehensive school, as at present conceived, does not hold the solution to this problem."
Again, at greater length:
"While recognising the advantage of small comprehensive schools up to the age of 15, we are compelled to look askance both at their weaknesses beyond that stage and also at the alternative of huge institutions … "
Note these words:
"… lacking the flexibility, intimacy and close personal associations with each neighbourhood, which small schools are more likely to achieve."
I quote those words because the hon. Lady quoted him in support of her argument, and at the same time sought to justify the big school.
Miss Bacon: There is a great deal more to that article than the hon. Gentleman has read. For instance, Dr. Pedley said in the same article:
"In 1948 a survey of the 21 grammar schools of a Midlands city and county (including two direct grant schools) showed that the average 'sixth form,' 9 per cent. of the whole, numbered 43 students, but that this figure was actually made up of 25 (first year), 14 (second year), and 4 (third year)."
Mr. Vosper: I am not suggesting that Dr. Pedley has become an opponent, but I am suggesting that the hon. Lady quoted him as an advocate whereas he shows serious objections in addition to those advanced by my hon. and right hon. Friends. I for my part feel fairly certain that some of those parents who might be attracted to this idea, as we were told by the hon. Lady they are in Manchester, are not so much attracted by the positive idea of a comprehensive school, but perhaps, as hon. Members have suggested, they are more deterred by the bogy of selection. Surely that can

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be avoided by better methods of selection—and we are seeing advances in that direction each week at present—and by what is my right hon. Friend's policy, selection for a greater variety of improved schools.
I wish to say a word on the subject of university and training college awards, which was raised by the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle). I am only sorry that he did not have the opportunity of raising that subject last Friday. He asked a number of questions, but I hope he will understand that, as the reports have yet to be published, I would not wish to go into great detail in the circumstances. I think I should make it clear, as he seemed to misunderstand, that when with reference to training college grants we talk about uniformity we are in fact going to work them on a national basis. I think he will find the report, when published, will be very acceptable to him and to those he represents. That applies particularly to the arrangements for equipment, about which the hon. Member was concerned. I think he will find that they are a considerable advance over the present practice.
When speaking of university and other students, the hon. Member asked about technical students. That is a matter which will be considered by local education authorities, as indeed it is being considered at the moment. I am hopeful they may give even more consideration to students on full-time courses of a high standard. I feel confident—but perhaps the hon. Member does not share my confidence—that local authorities will respond very well indeed to the plea of my right hon. Friend when he said that uniformity in basic university allowances as between one authority and another is greatly to be desired, and I hope this can be achieved. At the moment there are some laggard authorities, but I think they are far fewer than the hon. Member thinks.
Equally, I have reason to hope that the combination of the teacher training scales and the new scales for university awards will result in a much higher degree of uniformity than has been achieved hitherto. I say that because I hope my right hon. Friend, by a certain amount of leadership and persuasion, will
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achieve what some hon. Members opposite have suggested can only be achieved by centralisation.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Mait-land) asked me about Service children and that subject was mentioned by one or two other hon. Members. It is by no means a new problem, as is fully realised by my right hon. Friend, who is fully seized of its importance and has given a great deal of attention to it. As my hon. and gallant Friend will realise, it concerns several Government Departments and we have to find a solution acceptable to them all and—possibly this is even more difficult—to preserve the right of freedom of choice to the parents. Therefore, I regret that I cannot say anything further on that tonight.
The hon. Member for Fulham, East and one or two others mentioned the independent school, and all that I would do here is to remind the Committee that Part III of the Act is to come into force in two years' time, as at present envisaged, and that all those concerned will receive adequate notice of our requirements.
There is one further point in that connection. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) announced the introduction of Part III, she also announced a certain procedure for bringing to our attention undesirable teachers in independent schools. This is a matter which the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dodds) has pursued at Question Time, and I think it is worth while placing on record that this particular procedure has had, to my mind, a most astonishingly successful result, because out of 3,832 schools approached, up to today's date only 46 have not replied, and of those 16 have been approached only recently. For what, after all, is a voluntary approach, that is a very high degree of return. It has produced the number of 23 teachers who are being dealt with at the present time.
The only other point on which I want to say a word is the school health service. It has not been raised today, I suppose because the school health service continues, as I believe, to provide an improved service, but does not produce the colourful statistics which could be mentioned in this debate. It is worth placing on record that school medical officers now consider that only 2 per cent.

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of the children in our schools are in poor condition.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) referred earlier to illiteracy and to the Vernon-Watts test. I know that this is a subject that interests him very much. I was interested the other day to see the result of a survey carried out by the London County Council, the only authority to carry out the same survey as in 1952. Although the circumstances may be not strictly comparable, we find that in the recent London County Council survey only 96 of the 11 year old pupils surveyed are semi-literate or illiterate, and that compares with a figure for the Ministry of Education survey in 1952 of over 4 per cent. Although I will not draw too many conclusions from it, it does seem to me to be a trend in the right direction.
Mr. Pitman: Can the Minister also give the figures for the backward children as well as the illiterates and semi-literates?
Mr. Vosper: Not without notice. I do not know if we have got them yet, but I will see if they can be supplied.
Many valuable contributions have been made to the debate, and all will be fully studied. This is the first debate on education since the 1944 Act reached its 10th birthday, and these first 10 years must have brought many disappointments to the architects of the Act. I think, however, that the decade has also brought its successes, which have not been confined entirely to solving the stupendous task of accommodating an additional million and a half children. During my short period of office, I have been fortunate enough to be able to visit a large number of schools, which I think hon. Members will agree is always a satisfying experience, and have met many of those who devote their lives to the service of education.
The difficulties and problems which remain to be overcome are well in my mind, and certainly neither in my mind nor in that of my right hon. Friend the Minister is there any complacency. But I can say that everywhere I have found a feeling of confidence, which seems to have been continued during the recent conference at Scarborough, and, I suggest, even throughout the debate today. That is surely something to which all hon. Members can look with satisfaction, because
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confidence and support are possibly the things of which the teaching profession is in the greatest need today.
Whereupon Motion made, and Question, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again—[Mr. R. Thompson]—put and agreed to.
Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

OIL IN NAVIGABLE WATERS BILL [Lords]
Order for consideration, as amended (in the Standing Committee), read.
10.1 p.m.
The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I beg to move,
That the Bill be re-committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the Amendments to Clause 8, page 9, line 31 and Clause 8, page 10, line 46, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.
This Motion is required to cover Amendments to Clause 8 in my name. I put them down in order to enable me to carry out an undertaking which I gave in the Standing Committee. The re-committal Motion is also required because it is possible that the additional burden on harbour authorities may involve a charge on the rates, with a possible effect on the equalisation grant.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill immediately considered in Committee.
[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Clause 8.—(FACILITIES IN HARBOURS FOR DISPOSAL OF OIL RESIDUES.)
10.3 p.m.
Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I beg to move, in page 9, line 31, to leave out from "facilities" to the end of line 33.
It will probably be convenient to discuss at the same time the other Amendment on the Paper, in page 10, line 46, at the end to insert:
As respects any harbour in the United Kingdom, subsections (1), (2), (5) and (8) of this section shall have effect in relation to arrangements for disposing of oil residues discharged or deposited by vessels using the harbour's oil reception facilities, and to the making of such arrangements, as those subsections have effect in relation to oil reception facilities and the provision of such facilities.

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As I indicated in moving the recommittal Motion, these Amendments enable me to carry out an undertaking which I gave in the Standing Committee. The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) put down a number of Amendments, the effect of which was to extend the powers of harbour authorities and of the Minister in respect of the making of disposal arrangements for oil.
In substance, what those Amendments proposed to do, and what the Amendments I am now discussing do, is as follows: the Clause authorises harbour authorities to provide oil reception facilities and, if possible, to combine for that purpose. It also provides for a reserve power in the Minister to issue a direction to them to provide such facilities. As it stands, the Clause does not go so far as the provision of facilities for disposing of the oil. The Amendments will give the same power in respect of disposing of the oil as is given by the Clause for combination in respect of taking the oil, and they allow the same power of direction to the Minister.
Mr. Edward Shackleton: We appreciate the incorporation by the Minister of this Amendment, but I want to make one point clear. Upon another occasion, and in subsequent conversation and correspondence, the Minister indicated that there would always be economic pressure to dispose of these oils and sludges satisfactorily.
I can assure him that there are cases where oil is being buried under the ground at this moment. He did not give way on another case, and in regard to another Amendment, but the Amendment now before the Committee will give him power in the matter. I therefore inform him that there are cases where oil is being buried under the ground and is seeping out on the foreshore. I will not go into details, but I think he will find that the power he is taking is power that he should have, and I hope that he will be prepared to use it.
Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I should like to thank the Minister for accepting the principle of the Amendments put forward in Committee. He asked for them to be withdrawn for an operation which he described at the time as face-lifting. This is apparently the
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result of the face lifting. I would merely observe that the result is short and ugly instead of the original form, which was long and beautiful. Nevertheless I thank him.
Amendment agreed to.
Further Amendment made: In page 10, line 46, at end insert:
(9) As respects any harbour in the United Kingdom, subsections (1), (2), (5) and (8) of this section shall have effect in relation to arrangements for disposing of oil residues discharged or deposited by vessels using the harbour's oil reception facilities, and to the making of such arrangements, as those subsections have effect in relation to oil reception facilities and the provision of such facilities.—[Mr. Boyd-Carpenter.]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Mitchison: This Clause raises the question of the disposal of oil in harbours, and seems to be closely connected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) has already pointed out, with the disposal of oil in other places, particularly when it has been washed up on the beaches.
The present position appears to be that a local authority is entitled, but not bound, to deal with oil on the foreshore, and perhaps the Solicitor-General will explain the position in that respect. As I understand it, in all probability the result in most cases is a nuisance. I presume that the local authority may, therefore, serve an abatement notice on the person who has committed the nuisance, if it can find him; if not, on the owner of the foreshore, who appears in most cases to be the Crown.
This is a matter of very considerable practical importance. Perhaps we could be told whether local authorities are entitled to take these steps, and what other means they may have of recovering the cost of removing oil residues from the foreshore when they think it necessary to do so.
The Solicitor-General (Sir Harry Hylton-Foster): It is only by the generosity of the Chair that I might in this context reply to the argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I am grateful for the indulgence because in Committee I undertook to look into the matter. It obviously is one of public

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interest, and we are grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his ingenuity in this respect.
The local authority has power to clean the beach because, by Statute, the beach is incorporated in the local authority's area for all local government purposes. Whether it can be obliged to do so is a different matter, except that some person aggrieved could go to the magistrates' court and get the court to order the local authority, in appropriate cases, to do the cleaning—in more technical language to abate the nuisance. That is about the sum total of duty.
I regret that the rest of the position is so complicated that even in endeavouring to put it in a nutshell I am obliged to take a few moments to do so. There is the problem of recovering the expense. Where the summary procedure for abating a nuisance can be made to work it is really easy. There are two persons to be considered. There is the person who, in technical language, by his act, default or sufferance causes the nuisance to arise or continue, whom it is convenient to call the person responsible. The other person comes into the picture when the person responsible cannot be found; he is the owner or occupier, in this instance of the foreshore or, in the wording of the Measure, the premises.
May I deal first with the person responsible?—where one can find him. If he is the occupier of a "place on land as contemplated in Clause 3, one can serve an abatement notice, go through the procedure, and ultimately recover the expense of cleaning. That works whether the act giving rise to the nuisance, discharge of oil, is in a particular local government area or not. There is statutory provision by which one can tackle the offender in the place where he is offending.
That is all right in the case of a person on land. When a ship is concerned, it will depend on whether the vessel is within the local jurisdiction of the court of summary jurisdiction. It would be if the act or default, namely the discharge of the oil from the ship, took place
"… in any harbour, river, arm of the sea or other water lying between two or more local jurisdictions …"
That is the definition given in the Magistrates' Court Act, 1952. That, no doubt,
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would carry a large number of estuary cases, that is, inland water cases. In those cases one can serve an abatement notice.
The ship at sea—that is outside that definition of his jurisdiction—is much more difficult. H it had a British owner—and this is always assuming that one knows who has caused the nuisance, because the process does not begin unless one knows that—one could not apply the summary procedure, but one might possibly do something in the High Court which would avoid one's having to incur the expense and enable one to insist upon somebody else doing something about it.
If there is no owner within the jurisdiction of the court then, as far as my researches go, there is no hope of recovering the cost. Where the person responsible is not known, the application of this procedure is very difficult, for the simple reason that so large a proportion of the foreshore is in the ownership of the Crown and one cannot bring the Crown before the magistrates and have an abatement notice to deal with the matter. There may be complicated cases where the local authority has a lease of the foreshore from the Crown containing within its terms enough property to enable the local authority to be regarded as the owner.
Everybody must be grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering for drawing attention to this matter, but I am sure that he would be the first to agree that this Bill, which the House of Commons wants, is not the place to set about the matter, in so far as it may be unsatisfactory, because obviously it is not in this class of legislation that one can set about reviewing the public health and local government powers of local authorities. I suggest that we shall want to see how the Bill works as an Act of Parliament before we attempt some review of the powers to find out what gaps there turn out to be in practice. I have done my best, and I am most grateful for the indulgence of the Chair, to investigate in summary form what is the legal position.
Mr. Mitchison: I should like to thank the Solicitor-General for what he has said and to suggest that there might be other methods of dealing with the Crown than by notice of abatement. Lastly, I should

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like to remind him that in this place Law Officers are infallible and outside it unquotable.
Mr. F. H. Hayman: I am a little diffident about taking part in a debate in which learned lawyers are discussing very complicated issues but it seems to me that the Solicitor-General implied that local authorities could be sued in connection with this nuisance on the beach. There is a nuisance on almost every beach in the country from these oily deposits, and considerable damage is done to the interests of hoteliers and private persons. There is, therefore, an almost unlimited number of people who can apply to the local authority for enforcement.
10.15 p.m.
Last week I asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether he was prepared to appoint a committee to investigate the problem of clearing these nuisances from the beaches. He dismissed my suggestion in a very cavalier way implying that this Bill will abate the nuisance—
The Chairman: That does not arise on Clause 8.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended (in the Standing Committee, and on recommittal), considered.

Clause 3.—;(DISCHARGE OF OIL INTO UNITED KINGDOM WATERS.)
Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I beg to move, in page 4, line 42, at the end to insert:
"and, in relation to a railway wagon or road vehicle, means the person in charge of the wagon or vehicle and not the occupier of the land on which the wagon or vehicle stands."
Clause 3, which this Amendment seeks to amend in a certain particular, relates to the discharge of oil into territorial waters, and among other things to the discharge of oil from a place on land. Under the Clause where that discharge takes place from a place on land the occupier of the land is liable. The Bill
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as originally put forward did not deal specifically with the case where a discharge of oil arose from a vehicle, either a road or railway vehicle which, I am sorry to say, happens from time to time. In those circumstances it would seem wrong that the occupier of the land on which the vehicle was standing should be liable, and, therefore, this Amendment proposes in that case to substitute for the occupier of the land the person in charge of the vehicle in question.
Mr. Mitchison: This seems to us a very reasonable Amendment. It presumably contemplates the case of a railway wagon going off the property of the Transport Commission and running wild in some part of the country. It may happen, perhaps, that a road vehicle is of more immediate concern.
Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: I should like to ask the Minister one question, because I have never seen before the words "in charge of" in this context and I wonder exactly what they mean. Do they mean the owner or the driver or the lessee of the wagon or vehicle, or exactly what do they mean?
Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If I may reply, by leave of the House, I understand that the term "in charge of" is one which is very familiar in the context of the Road Traffic Acts. It is the person who, in fact, is in control of the vehicle at the time, and the courts have fairly frequently to deal with this very problem, for example, in cases under Section 15 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930.
Mr. Shackleton: One of the reasons which the Minister gave for this Amendment was it would be quite unfair to attack a man on whose land the oil pollution takes place. But oil pollution may take place in other ways. It is even conceivable that it could come from an aeroplane. It is a little late in the day to do anything about it, but since the right hon. Gentleman is so passionate in his desire to be comprehensive he ought to consider it a little further.
Amendment agreed to.
(Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified) Bill read the Third time and passed, with Amendment.

PUBLIC SERVICE VEHICLES (TRAVEL CONCESSIONS) BILL
(changed from PUBLIC SERVICE VEHICLES (CONTRACT CARRIAGES AND SPECIAL TRAVEL FACILITIES) BILL)
As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
10.20 p.m.
Mr. Edward Short: Before the Bill passes to another place, I should like to pay tribute to those who have helped to make this little Bill possible—first of all to my colleagues, who have given a great deal of their time to it over the last four months and who even came to London on a very wet and cold day during the Christmas Recess to consider it. I should like to thank them for their help.
Although I was extremely disappointed in the Government's attitude towards the original Clause 1—and on that, of course, we live to fight another day—I should like to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for the assistance which he has given us. In all the discussions which I have had with him, both in public and in private, he has been most kind, courteous and helpful. The Bill owes a great deal to him and, if I may say so, to his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton), whom I should also like to thank.
I am also extremely grateful to the Government for making the final stages of the Bill possible in rather difficult circumstances, and not least to the Prime Minister for the personal interest which he has taken in the matter.
The Bill will mean that about five million old-aged pensioners, disabled people, blind people and young people throughout the country will be able to continue the travel concessions which they have been enjoying. On their behalf I should like to thank the House for making possible the passage of the Bill to another place.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

WAR PENSIONS (DISSEMINATED SCLEROSIS)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Studholme.]
10.22 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Moyle: I propose on the Adjournment to raise the question of those ex-Service men who have fallen victims to the disease known as disseminated sclerosis. There are, I believe, about a thousand—perhaps a few more—of those ex-Service men who took part in the last war and who, subsequent to their demobilisation, fell victims to the disease.
I do not want to say too much about the disease. The Parliamentary Secretary knows much better than I do the nature of it, and I have no doubt that the report of the debate will be read by those who are affected by it, and one has to be extremely careful, in referring to it, not to cause undue distress amongst those on whose behalf I speak tonight.
Here we have a number of ex-Service men, most of whom have seen active service, who were called up and declared to be medically fit, who were placed in category A, who did active service and many of whom were wounded in battle. As a result, their wounds have been subject to investigation by the Parliamentary Secretary's Department for the purpose of assessing pension, and pensions have been awarded for the wounds at a rate of 20 per cent., 30 per cent. and so on.
I understand that most awards were about 30 per cent., but a few cases have been admitted by the appropriate tribunals as having been aggravated by war service and, as a result, in those cases the pensions have been increased accordingly, But half of them who were called up, took part actively in the war, were wounded, returned to civil life and resumed their civil occupations, and at some point thereafter fell victims to this disease.
The procedure has been that application has been made by the ex-Service man affected by the disease to be considered for an increase in pension. The Minister has replied that on the advice of his medical experts the disease is in no way

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caused or aggravated by the man's war service or his wounds, and, therefore, the claim has been disallowed. It has then been referred to the Ministry's tribunal, to which the Ministry's expert advice has been given, and the claim has been rejected. The claim has then been referred to the appeals tribunal, and turned down. The final arbitration has been that of the independent tribunal which has considered the matter and turned the claim down upon the expert medical evidence given that the disease was not caused or even aggravated by the appellant's war service.
This sort of procedure is common to most of those who are affected by the disease. This came to my notice through a constituent of mine who is suffering from the disease. After I had gone into the matter, I felt that the Minister ought to look at the rules and the present terms of the Royal Warrant to see whether there was not a case for giving this body of ex-Service men the possibility of being assessed at the 100 per cent. disability rate.
I will tell the Minister why. First, it is admitted by all the experts that they do not know the cause of the disease. If that is so, why should not the benefit of the doubt be given to the appellant? The constituent of mine, a young man in category A, a well-known athlete in his regiment, returned—
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Brigadier J. G. Smyth): On a point of order. The hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) is now referring specifically to a case which has actually been before an appeal tribunal. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, the case is not within my jurisdiction.
Mr. Speaker: I understand that is so. I caused the hon. Member to be informed that once a case has been dealt with by the independent tribunal it is entirely outside the Minister's jurisdiction and the Minister has no responsibility for it. Therefore, the hon. Member should make his point without identifying the case so as to bring his remarks within the possible misconstruction that he is either criticising the tribunal or asking the Minister to take some action for which he is not responsible.
Mr. Moyle: I regret that departure, Mr. Speaker. I am aware of the difficulty and will confine myself to the generalities of the case.
As it is admitted by the medical experts that the cause of the disease is unknown, why should not the benefit of the doubt be given to ex-Service men stricken by the disease who have rendered active service, some of whom, if not most of whom, have been wounded in the course of battle, and then returned to civil life before being stricken down by the disease?
I want the Parliamentary Secretary to convey this to the Minister. Does he realise the inevitable distress that is caused, not by the Department or those in charge of it, but by the prolonged consideration of these appeals by one tribunal and another in order to ascertain whether the appellant has a case for a higher assessment than that fixed by the Minister? I should like to know what is the exact cost to the nation, including the administrative costs, the costs of the experts, medical, legal and of those who man the tribunals and who try to dispense justice. I do not know what the cost is, but in this modern age, with the development of the Welfare State and with our whole body of social insurance schemes, is not the time overdue to revise this machinery of justice in the light of post-war circumstances which have arisen from the operation of our Welfare State?
The British Legion and various other voluntary organisations are trying to assist these poor people by gifts to supplement what they receive from the National Assistance Board. I am certain that it does not express the wish of the nation that these people should be dealt with in that way.
It would be an act of humanity and of sensible administration if these people were lifted entirely from the ambit of controversy as to whether their illness is due to, or is aggravated by, their war service. They should be put on an entirely different basis so that they would receive the benefits that would accrue to them from the Minister if their assessment had been 100 per cent. It would reflect greater credit on the nation if that were done. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary tonight will say something in reply to my plea on behalf of these

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men, who have served the nation well, and will say that there is hope that they will receive consideration when the Royal Warrant—as I hope it will be—is soon reviewed and revised.
10.33 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Brigadier J. G. Smyth): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) for raising this matter in such a moderate way, because I know how strongly he feels about it and what a great deal of thought he has given to it. I am also grateful to him for raising this very distressing disease of disseminated sclerosis, which has often been mentioned and discussed in the House but which, I feel, is not properly understood.
I should like to get the hon. Member's plea into proper perspective. Since the last war, we have had a comprehensive social security scheme, including the National Health Service, which covers everybody in the country. It is a scheme of which we are all very proud. We also have a war pensions scheme to compensate, in addition, for disabilities due to war service.
The Royal Warrant could not be clearer than it is on this point. Article 3 says:
"Under this Our Warrant awards may be made where the disablement or death of a member of the military forces is due to service."
It also makes clear the rules with regard to entitlement to pension, and that the onus of proof is on the Minister, where the claim is made or the death takes place within seven years of the termination of service. However, in all these cases, whether they are within the seven years or whether they are not, disablement, to come under the war pension scheme, must be causally related to service. That is the qualification, and that has been the qualification ever since the First World War.
In the First World War two-thirds of the casualties were wounds, gunshot or shell wounds. In the Second World War, on the other hand, the causes of two-thirds of our pensionable cases were diseases. In order that a war pension can be given, those diseases must have been causally connected with service. That is absolutely clear in the Warrant, and has
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been understood ever since the Royal Warrant has existed.
The hon. Gentleman has made the old claim, "Fit for service, fit for pension." That claim used to be pressed years ago, but it has been abandoned by all the ex-Service organisations now. There is no pressure for that claim now, particularly since the introduction of the social security scheme.
Arguing this case logically and not sentimentally—and I know that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I must not do the latter—we come to this, that in every case of disease like disseminated sclerosis, the question is, was it caused or aggravated by service? That is the whole qualification, and the pension can be granted under the war pensions provisions only on a medical Certificate, by the Ministry's medical officers, or by a tribunal, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, that the disablement is causally related to service.
Let us now come to this terrible disease, disseminated sclerosis. I should like to assure the hon. Gentleman that since I have been in this job I have taken a tremendous amount of trouble about this very horrible disease. I have not merely taken the advice of my medical officers, which I am sure is based on very sound premises, but I have talked to sufferers from the disease all over Britain, in England and Scotland, too, in hospitals and in their own homes. I have done so with the idea of trying to see whether there was any common basis for this disease. I have even talked with their parents. As a Minister, one cannot see the parents of all pensioners. If one had to do that there would be no end to the inquiries. However, on occasion Members of Parliament have brought here the parents of boys who have this terrible disease and I have met them. They refused to believe that their sons could have got this disease had it not been caused by war service, as the hon. Gentleman maintains.
There has been a series of very important judgments by the Court of Session and the High Court in recent years on this disease. I would assure the hon. Gentleman that the whole outlook of my Ministry on these matters is, "Can we give the man a pension for this?" and not "Can we find any reason on which we can rule him out?" If we can award

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a pension within the terms of the Royal Warrant we seek to give one.
I should like to tell the hon. Gentleman one or two facts about the disease. It is one of the most common diseases of the central nervous system. It is a progressive disease of unknown origin, and its progress is usually intermittent. I have talked to boys who have had an attack and then been perfectly all right for about three years before having another attack. Women are more frequently affected than men, in the proportion of about three to two.
The disease is most prevalent in Northern and Western Europe and rare in tropical and sub-tropical countries. It is found in persons of widely differing occupations and in all strata of society. It was remarkable that in the First World War, when we had thousands of young men who changed their habitat and their mode of life and underwent all sorts of risks and stresses and strains, there was among them very little disseminated sclerosis.
Mr. Moyle: On the point about the difference between the First World War and the Second World War, I understand that a number of rare diseases were discovered among our Service men in the last war which were not known in the first.
Brigadier Smyth: I have had a good deal of experience, for instance of Far Eastern prisoners-of-war, in whom I have been specially interested and who underwent particular stresses and strains. It is remarkable that I have come across only a very few cases of disseminated sclerosis among them.
The thing that we do know—and this, I think, is the really important feature from the point of view of the argument that the hon. Gentleman advanced—is that it cannot be considered in any way to be a military disease. There is no sign that people are more prone to disseminated sclerosis in the Forces, whatever stresses and strains they underwent, than are people in civil life. That is absolutely proved and clear. It is not a military disease in any shape or form.
Nevertheless, we try in my Ministry to stretch the Regulations to help these boys in any way we can. In cases where a man is subjected to a sudden shock and
904
then, within a short period of time, he shows signs of disseminated sclerosis, we say that perhaps the shock, although we know it has nothing to do with the disease, might have accelerated its progress. Therefore, we give pensions for aggravation. I have here the figures of the last war cases of pensions given for aggravation of disseminated sclerosis. We have made 1,538 awards and there have been 1,117 rejections.
Mr. William Ross: When did the Ministry start making these awards?
Brigadier Smyth: Since the last war.
Mr. Ross: Yes, but when did the hon. and gallant Gentleman start making them?
Brigadier Smyth: Since the 1939–45 war. That is the number of awards made. I think that will show the position, considering that this is not a military disease and that if it were more people would get it in the Service than in civil life, which has absolutely proved not to be the case.
I occasionally get complaints from civilians who are lying in bed in hospital next to a war disability pensioner. They complain that with the same disease they are not getting the same concessions as the war disability pensioner. I make that point only to show the hon. Gentleman that there are two sides to the question in what is not a military disease. I do not think anyone lays claim to that, and I am convinced from my experience of the way in which these cases are dealt with in the Ministry—certainly since I have known them and, I am certain, in the reign of our predecessors who dealt with them in exactly the same way—that the terms of the Royal Warrant are interpreted as generously and humanely as possible.
Mr. Moyle: The only point about which I am really concerned is that the benefit of the doubt should be given to the appellant in these cases and that the terms of the Royal Warrant should be amended to cover that particular case.
Brigadier Smyth: I could not agree for a moment that the Royal Warrant should cover all those cases. It gives the benefit of the doubt, but the hon. Gentleman is trying to make out that because a soldier gets a civilian disease he should therefore get a military pension for it.
Mr. Moyle: Not quite that. My case is that, as the cause of the disease is not known by medical or any other experts, it is therefore very difficult to ascertain beyond any doubt that a man's active war service was not at any rate a factor in aggravating this disease, if not the cause of it.
Brigadier Smyth: As I told the hon. Gentleman, we have been very generous in our interpretation of "aggravation." The hon. Gentleman is trying to persuade me to admit that a disease that everyone knows is not a military disease should be pensioned under the war pension scheme. I do not think that any ex-Service organisation or anyone at all has agreed to that. The whole criterion of the war pension scheme is: was the disability, whatever it was—obviously a wound is easy to ascertain—causally connected with the war service? If it was, then the disease is pensionable. If it was not, the man is in exactly the same position as all the thousands of other people who get disseminated sclerosis in this country. Just as many people get
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the disease in this country in civil life as in military life and they are all covered by our social security scheme and our National Health Service. All we can do in the war pension scheme is to compensate the man for any disability he suffers as a result of war service.
The scheme was never intended to be a scheme which for the rest of the man's life, whatever sort of ailment he got, would compensate him with an increase of war pension. That has never been the intention of the Royal Warrant under any Government. I believe that the hon. Member has been a little confused about that. Most people who have seen the Warrant in operation and the way it has been handled in the Ministry, both in my time and before my time, would agree it is done in the most human way possible. I assure the hon. Member that that is so.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Eleven o'clock.

NATIONAL FINANCE
  Income Tax (Budget Proposals)
  Income Tax (Budget Proposals)
  National Savings
  National Savings
  Tax Assessment (Fluctuating Incomes)
  Tax Assessment (Fluctuating Incomes)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  Pennine Way
  Pennine Way
  Population Transfer Agreements (Exchequer Aid)
  Population Transfer Agreements (Exchequer Aid)
  Green Belts
  Green Belts
  Improvement Grants (Rural Cottages)
  Improvement Grants (Rural Cottages)
  Town and Country Planning (Claims)
  Town and Country Planning (Claims)
  HOUSING (BROMSGROVE AND REDDITCH)
  HOUSING (BROMSGROVE AND REDDITCH)
EMPLOYMENT
  Furniture and Upholstery Industry
  Furniture and Upholstery Industry
  Wage Rates
  Wage Rates
  Bromsgrove and Redditch
  Bromsgrove and Redditch
  Wales
  Wales
  Disabled Persons, Cardiff
  Disabled Persons, Cardiff
  Coal Mining Industry (Lost Working Days)
  Coal Mining Industry (Lost Working Days)
BRITISH ARMY
  National Service Men (Civil Occupations)
  National Service Men (Civil Occupations)
  Illness (Notification to Next of Kin)
  Illness (Notification to Next of Kin)
TRADE AND COMMERCE
  Cinema Attendances
  Cinema Attendances
  Cotton Industry
  Cotton Industry
  Exports, Scotland
  Exports, Scotland
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
  Service Men (Communications to Members)
  Service Men (Communications to Members)
  National Service Men (Civilian Clothing)
  National Service Men (Civilian Clothing)
  GROUND RENTS
  GROUND RENTS
  HOUSE OF COMMONS CATERING
  HOUSE OF COMMONS CATERING
  PARENTS' PENSIONS, CARDIFF
  PARENTS' PENSIONS, CARDIFF
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Gross Fixed Investment
  Gross Fixed Investment
  Tillage Area
  Tillage Area
  MALAYA (TUBERCULOSIS INCIDENCE)
  MALAYA (TUBERCULOSIS INCIDENCE)
  WILD BIRD SHOOTING, NORTHUMBERLAND
  WILD BIRD SHOOTING, NORTHUMBERLAND
SCOTLAND
  National Gallery (Velasquez Acquisition)
  National Gallery (Velasquez Acquisition)
  Peterhead Prison (Conditions)
  Peterhead Prison (Conditions)
  Air-Raid Shelter, Aberdeen (Demolition)
  Air-Raid Shelter, Aberdeen (Demolition)
TRANSPORT
  Canals, Leek
  Canals, Leek
  Farm Tractor Trailers (Registration Plates)
  Farm Tractor Trailers (Registration Plates)
Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

  PRIVATE AND PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILLS
  2.35 p.m.
  THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA): My Lords, the formidable-looking Motion standing in my name is needed to carry over to the next Parliament Private and Provisional Order Bills which have already been introduced into either House of Parliament. I beg formally to move.
  Moved to resolve,
  That the promoters of every Private or Provisional Order Confirmation Bill and petitioners for Personal Bills which shall have been introduced into or presented to this House in the present Session of Parliament, and which shall have passed this House and been sent to the House of Commons, or which shall be pending in this House, shall have leave to introduce or present the same in the next Session of Parliament, provided that notice of their intention to do so be lodged in the Private Bill Office not later than Noon on the last sitting day of the present Session; and provided that all fees due by them thereon, up to that period, be paid;
  That an alphabetical list of all such Bills, with a statement of the stages at which they shall have arrived, shall be prepared in the Private Bill Office, and printed;
  That every such Bill which has originated in this House shall be deposited in the Private Bill Office not later than three o'clock on or before the third day on which the House shall sit after the next meeting of Parliament for business other than judicial business, with a declaration annexed thereto, signed in the case of a Private Bill by the agent, and in the case of a Provisional Order Confirmation Bill by an officer of the department by which the Orders to be confirmed by such Bill
  544
  are made, stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill at the last stage of the proceedings thereon in this House in the present Session;
  That in case any such Bill brought from the House of Commons in the present Session, upon which the proceedings shall have been suspended in this House, shall be brought from the House of Commons in the next Session of Parliament, the agent for such Bill, or an officer of the department, as the case may be, shall deposit in the Private Bill Office after the Bill shall have passed the House of Commons and prior to the First Reading thereof in this House, a declaration stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the House of Commons in the present Session, with this modification that if any such Bill shall have been amended in this House in the present Session, such amendments shall be deemed to have been made in Committee;
  That such Bills shall thereupon be deemed to have been passed through every stage through which the same shall have passed in the present Session; and that no new fees be charged in regard to such stages;
  That the Standing Orders by which the proceedings on Bills are regulated shall not apply to any Private or Provisional Order Confirmation Bill which shall have originated in this House or been brought up from the House of Commons in the present Session in regard to any of the stages through which the same shall have passed;
  That every certificate from the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills given in respect of any Private or Provisional Order Confirmation Bill originating in the House of Commons, upon which the proceedings shall have been suspended in that House in the present Session, shall be deemed to have been given in respect of such Bill, if the same shall be brought from the House of Commons in the next Session of Parliament, and any notices published and served, and any deposits made in respect of such Bill, in respect of the present Session shall be held to have been published, served and made respectively for the Bill so brought

  545
  from the House of Commons in the next Session of Parliament;
  That no petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on any Bill unless their petition shall have been presented within the time limited in the present Session;
  That in case the time limited for presenting petitions against any such Bill has not expired at the close of the present Session, petitioners may be heard before the Committee on such Bill, provided that their petition shall be presented not later than the fourth day on which the House shall sit for business other than judicial business in the next Session.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
  On Question, Motion agreed to: Ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them with the above Resolutions.

  CROFTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, I have it in Command from Her Majesty The Queen to signify to the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Crofters (Scotland) Bill, has consented to place the interests of the Crown at the disposal of Parliament for the purpose of the Bill.
  After the long debate on Second Reading, and the care with which Amendments were moved on the Committee stage, I do not think your Lordships will wish me to make a speech on Third Reading. The purpose of the Bill is to reorganise the crofting communities of the Highlands so that they shall play a full part in the modern economy. I think your Lordships have accepted that purpose, and I will, therefore, ask your Lordships to give the Bill a Third Reading. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Home.)
  On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

  REQUISITIONED HOUSES AND HOUSING (AMENDMENT) BILL
  2.38 p.m.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF MUNSTER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. After a discussion through the usual channels, it was found more convenient to postpone the Second Reading of this Bill from Thursday last, April 21, until to-day. I am glad, as I am sure all your Lordships are, to see that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has returned to his place, and I trust that he has recovered from his recent illness.
  This Bill is divided into two parts. The first part seeks to amend the existing law on requisitioned houses, and the second part amends various Housing Acts affecting England and Wales, and Scotland. Although the war has been over for some ten years, there are still 60,000 houses held under requisitioning powers in which are dwelling to-day some 90,000 families. Of that figure just under 50,000 properties are situated in the Greater London area, so that to a large extent this measure deals with London. I think there can be no noble Lord in this House who would not agree that requisitioning was absolutely essential during the war years and, indeed, for several years thereafter; but it was never contemplated at that time that requisitioning under emergency powers should continue indefinitely or become a permanent part of our housing system.
  The House may remember that local authorities have held these requisitioned properties as agents for Her Majesty's Government, although in practice, as I understand, they are now treated as part of the authorities' general housing pool. I do not think it would be unfair to local authorities to say that some of them, at any rate, have found it very convenient to cling to properties which were bequeathed to them in an emergency, for this reason: that any losses which may have occurred from time to time, in handling such properties have been paid for by Her Majesty's Government. The net cost is in the region of £6¼ million per annum. I feel sure the House will agree with me that the time has come when the old system should come to an

  547
  end and a new system should be introduced; a system which will remove any hardships to owners who are in serious or urgent need of their houses and who have up to date been unable to secure their release, and at the same time avoid causing hardship to families at present living in these requisitioned properties. I am glad to tell the House that the broad principles contained in this Bill have been agreed by the local authority associations. The measure has three main objects. The first is to bring to an end the use of requisitioning powers for housing purposes within the next five years; the second is to avoid causing hardship to those families at present living in these houses; and the third is to enable owners of requisitioned premises to secure their early release if they have urgent need of them.
  With those few introductory remarks, let me turn to the Bill to explain its main clauses and to indicate how the Government's proposals will be implemented. Clause 1 transfers from the Minister of Housing to the local authority the right to possession of a requisitioned house until March 31, 1960. Clause 3 lays down that on the commencement of the Act, which will be one month after the Royal Assent has been given, any house which becomes vacant is to be released by the local authority unless the Minister grants them permission to retain it.
  Clause 4 is of particular importance, for it is the first method by which the interests of families living in requisitioned houses can be safeguarded. Under this clause the local authority will invite owners to accept the present occupants as tenants, but the rents which are payable will be controlled under the Rent Acts. Any owner who accepts the licensee as a statutory tenant will be paid compensation for forgoing his right to vacant possession. I think noble Lords who are interested in this subject will realise that if the owner of a requisitioned house did not wish to occupy it himself or, indeed, to sell it, but was willing, on the other hand, to accept the present occupants under rent-controlled tenancies, it might well be a major contribution towards reducing the number of requisitioned premises. I should add that many occupants of requisitioned houses are having their rents subsidised at the present time, and the Bill empowers local
  548
  authorities to maintain these subsidies for a period of ten years. In such cases as those, the local authority will pay to the owner of the requisitioned house the difference between the full controlled rent and the lower subsidised rent, and these payments in accordance with the clause will rank for a grant from the Exchequer.
  Clause 5 enables the owner of a requisitioned house to make application to the court for the release of the house if he requires it for his own purpose or for that of his near relatives. The clause gives owners exactly similar rights as the owner of a rent-controlled house, who to-day can apply to the court for possession for his own occupation. The application will, in this case, as in the other case, be considered by the court in the light of the relative hardships of the owner and the occupier. Clause 6 empowers the Minister to give directions to a local authority requiring them either to release a requisitioned house or to purchase, if the Minister is satisfied that the owner is suffering severe hardship. Clause 7 enables an owner who wishes to modernise his requisitioned house, or to convert it into flats with the aid of a grant under the Housing Acts, 1949 and 1954, and is prepared to offer tenancies to persons nominated by the local authority, to have his house released.
  I now turn to deal with the financial provisions of the Bill which are set out in Clauses 9, 10 and 11. As I think I have already mentioned and, indeed, as noble Lords will be aware, up to date Her Majesty's Government have met the whole of the expenditure in connection with requisitioned houses and will continue to do so until April 1, 1956—that is to say, April 1 next year. From that date, local authorities will be required to bear 25 per cent. of the cost, and the remaining 75 per cent. will be reimbursed by the Exchequer. Provision is made in Clause 10 of the Bill to enable the Minister to make additional grants to local authorities in those areas where the burden of rates might become excessive; but, of course, the Minister will have to be satisfied that the local authority has taken all reasonable steps to reduce the number of requisitioned houses. For this purpose, a formula has been worked out in agreement with the local authority associations.
  Under Clause 11 the Minister may make a grant to the local authority for

  549
  a house which is purchased or leased by them. The grant in both cases will amount to 75 per cent. for a period of twenty years on a purchase, or for ten years on a lease. I think the only other clause to which I need draw the attention of the House is Clause 16, which implements a recent recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee. In their Third Report for the year 1952–53, the Committee drew attention to the fact that no statutory limit had been laid down to the amount of advances which could be made from the Consolidated Fund to meet the operations of the Scottish Special Housing Association. Accordingly, this clause applies a limit on the advances which can be made. I have referred only briefly to the main clauses of the Bill and have endeavoured to give the House a description of each of those principal clauses. With that brief explanation, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Munster.)
  2.51 p.m.
  LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I first of all thank the noble Earl for his kindly reference to me and for his courtesy in postponing the Second Reading from last Thursday until to-day. I hope it will be a comfort to him to know that I feel much better for those few days' respite. May I also thank him for the clear way in which he has explained what is a fairly complicated Bill. It is very significant that, at a time when a large number of measures are falling by the wayside on account of the forthcoming Election, this particular measure, which is for the relief of landowners, is one of the few to be saved. It is somewhat indicative of the approach of the present Government that a measure for the protection of landowners should have priority over, say, a measure like the Road Traffic Bill which was concerned with the safety of the citizen on the road. These are matters which will no doubt be discussed outside. We have to deal with the Bill as we find it before us.
  On the Third Reading in another place my right honourable friend Mr. Dalton said that this Bill was a very bad Bill when introduced, and that it left the Commons as a bad one; that although certain improvements had been made fundamentally it remained the same. I
  550
  should like to associate myself with that statement. The noble Earl described the three purposes of the Bill. I have no complaint with his description, although he laid equal emphasis on all three, and it seemed to me that that was not a correct description of what the Bill does. It enables owners of houses which were requisitioned both during the war and subsequent to the war to obtain possession of them at the latest within five years, but in certain circumstances somewhat earlier. The five-year period is certain. At the end of five years, the axe falls and every requisitioned house will go back to its owner.
  I say at once that I agree with the noble Earl that there must come a time when requisitioned houses must be returned to their owners. I should never suggest for a moment that requisitioning should go on for all time. I will admit at once that the fact of requisitioning may cause hardship to some owners and that, if it is at all possible, they should get their houses back. But what strikes me about this Bill is that, whereas the owner of a requisitioned house will certainly and inevitably get his house back by the prescribed date, March 31, 1960, there is nothing in the Bill which gives the tenant any protection or makes any suggestion how he is to get on when the axe falls and the accommodation is released, which may be even earlier than 1960 if there is severe hardship or hardship on the owner. There is nothing in this Bill which sets out what is to happen to the poor unfortunate tenant.
  I would ask the House to recollect for a moment—because in these matters public memories are very short—who these tenants or, as they are described in the Bill, licensees, occupying requisitioned houses, are. They are almost invariably people who have suffered as a result of the war, people whose homes were destroyed, who were rendered homeless. The emergency to which the noble Earl referred in the course of his speech was the emergency of hundreds of thousands of people having been rendered homeless by enemy action and something having to be done about it. I submit that this emergency still exists. If nothing is done for the licensees of these houses, these people will still be homeless and there is—I was going to say "nothing," but the noble Earl did refer to Clause 4 of the Bill—very little in the Bill which even suggests that the

  551
  problem of providing homes for these people when requisitioning comes to an end has been considered.
  What is the consideration that has been given? The noble Earl talked of Clause 4. I think he also mentioned that there were other clauses, but he never referred further to them. Clause 4 is the clause which provides the protection for the tenant. And what is it? It is that the local authority may enter into an agreement with the owner, and the owner may, if he wishes to, accept the licensee as a tenant. The matter is entirely in the hands of the owner. It is for him to say whether or not he will accept the tenant. If he accepts the tenant or licensee, then certain financial consequences flow. But if he does not, then what? Nothing. No provision at all is made for the unfortunate licensee or tenant in the event of the owner not desiring to accept the licensee as a tenant. If the owner looks at the matter entirely from the point of view of his own self-interest, as he is entitled to do, and as he naturally will do, why should he accept the tenant or licensee at a controlled rent, with all the difficulty thereafter of having the tenancy perpetuated and being subject to the Rent Restrictions Acts? Why should he, when he can get vacant possession of the house and sell it at the inflated prices which are still current to-day? This so-called protection to the tenant is just a will-o'-the-wisp. I cannot imagine one case in a thousand where an owner would be willing to accept a licensee as a tenant under the conditions laid down in the Bill.
  I do not want to deal with this matter at any length. My broad criticism of the Bill is that it gives no protection to the tenant or licensee during the five years in which it is possible for an owner to apply to the court or to the Minister to get possession. The owner has so many ways in which he can seek possession. He can, of course, go to court, and in many cases the very act of his threatening to go to court will be sufficient to frighten the licensee into giving possession. Incidentally, if the owner does go to court, and succeeds in establishing that his hardship is greater than that of the tenant, presumably the tenant will have to pay the cost of the proceedings, which is adding insult to injury: not only is he rendered homeless, but he also has to pay
  552
  the costs of establishing it. That will be the consequence. The owner can also go to the Minister: he can ask that his house should be acquired. There are no means by which the local authority can negotiate with an owner, but, as I understand the Bill, there are no powers of compulsory purchase if a local authority wish to acquire the property.
  Furthermore, as has been pointed out in another place, a great many of these houses are unsuitable for permanent occupation, and it would be foolhardy on the part of a local authority to acquire these requisitioned houses on a large scale; and many of them will not do so. I suggest that it is not practical politics for a local authority to acquire them all. So we are left with the position that, whenever during the five years, the owner of a house can establish that he is suffering greater hardship than the tenant, or severe hardship, then the tenant can be dispossessed and there is nothing in the Bill that ensures that he will be given other accommodation. Certainly the owner is not required to give him alternative accommodation; nor is the local authority. At the end of five years what will certainly happen is that the owner will get possession automatically and the licensees will be left "in the air." This Bill would have been much improved if it had included something giving the tenant definite protection, so as to let him know that whatever happens, even if his hardship is not as great as that of the owner, he will not find himself without a roof over his head. If that is the intention, there is no reason at all why it should not be stated.
  As the noble Earl has explained, some 60,000-odd dwellings, and 90,000 families, are involved. Most of them are in the London area, but a substantial number are in Birmingham. As I say, these are all victims of the war. The local authority find themselves in this difficulty: that in so far as they are able to provide alternative accommodation for families who become victims of this Bill, they are to that extent deferring the time when other families on the housing list, whose need may be equally great, can get possession of a house. I should have thought that the sensible thing would have been not to hurry this matter but to defer the date of possession until such time as the local authority are definitely

  553
  in a position to ensure that families who are dispossessed can get alternative accommodation.
  There was some discussion about this matter in another place, and I believe that the Minister was prepared—I admit that he said he was not convinced of the need—to extend the period for two years, over and above the five years, in those cases where the local authority could establish that they needed a little longer. But he attached a condition which seemed to me, with all respect, to be an unreasonable condition—namely, that there should be no voting against the Third Reading of the Bill. There are other features of this Bill to which some of my friends in another place objected, and it seemed to me that to impose a condition of this kind in exchange for accepting an Amendment was utterly unreasonable, and something which deprived Members of another place of their proper rights.
  We in this House are not going to divide against the Second Reading of the Bill, and we shall probably not divide against the Third Reading. In those circumstances, I should like to ask the noble Earl, Lord Munster, whether the extension of two years which the Minister in another place was prepared to grant, on certain conditions, might not be granted here. In any case it would have had to be done by way of an Amendment in this House, because the suggestion was made at a late stage in the proceedings in another place. If the noble Earl is prepared to give an assurance that that will be done on the Committee stage, it will go some little way towards meeting the fears of many people, particularly the local authorities in areas where there are a large number of requisitioned houses, that they may be faced with a crisis because they will not be able to provide the housing that is needed when requisitioning comes to an end. It will also remove the fears of tenants who are in a state of considerable anxiety and uncertainty about what will happen to them at the end of the requisitioning period. As I have said, we do not propose to divide against the Second Reading. We think it somewhat strange that this Bill, of all others, should have been rescued from the guillotine, but I hope that even at this late stage the noble Earl will be able to do something to make the Bill
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  a better Bill and one which will give less anxiety to those who are so deeply concerned about it.
  3.8 p.m.
  LORD MESTON: My Lords, it is always rather difficult to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, because he has such a profound knowledge of this matter in which everybody else appears to be a mere amateur. I should, however, like to congratulate the Government upon having introduced this Bill, which deals with a rather difficult subject. I do not think that the Bill will cause any profound satisfaction or achieve any profound objective, but that is not the fault of the Government; it is due entirely to the complexity of the problem. The difficulty is that the subject of requisition, like the subject of rent restriction, will be solved only by the erection of more dwelling-houses.
  I know that noble Lords have no jurisdiction over financial matters, but I am sorry to see that within a short time 25 per cent. of the cost of management of requisitioned premises will have to be borne by the local authorities. In my view, the present arrangement, under which the Exchequer carry the whole 100 per cent. of the expense, is far more equitable and should be continued. The burden of local rates is an absolute abomination of desolation. It has increased, is increasing and is likely to increase ad infinitum. Therefore, in the circumstances, what is going to be done should there be any great increase in local rates? Moveover, 80 per cent. of these properties are in the Greater London area, and a certain number of boroughs in that area are likely to suffer a considerable increase in the rates. I appreciate that, under Clause 10 (2) of the Bill, the Minister has power to make a special grant to a local authority; but that is a somewhat indefinite and circuitous way of dealing with the matter. It would be far more simple, and fairer, to say that the Exchequer will continue to pay the whole of the amount of the expense of requisitioned premises.
  Passing to Clause 4, which I consider is one of the most important in the Bill, I would say that here again Her Majesty's Government should be thanked for having materially amended the clause since the Bill was first introduced. It deals with a number of important matters, including liability for payment of rates. There are, however, a few comments which one may

  555
  still make upon it. The owner may receive a notice inviting him to accord to the licensee of the dwelling the status of statutory tenant. I should like to know, as a matter of interest, what will happen to an owner who does not accept that invitation. I recollect that a gentleman called Mr. Daniel once received an invitation to "Messrs. Lions"; but history does not tell us of any second invitation. I should also like to see a definition of "statutory tenant." Her Majesty's Government may say, quite correctly, that it is unnecessary to have any such definition because Clause 4 deals with that matter. But there are various types of statutory tenant. There are those who remain on after the termination of a contractual tenancy; there are those who become statutory tenants on the death of the previous statutory tenant by virtue of some relationship. Curiously enough, when one comes to Part I of the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954, one finds there are statutory tenants who become statutory tenants at the termination of a ground lease yet who were not previously within the protection of the Rent Restrictions Acts. The position might be made clearer by a definition of a statutory tenant.
  In subsection (4) I see a reference to a statutory successor of a licensee. What happens when a statutory tenant dies before 1960 and leave no widow or other dependent who would otherwise be entitled to succeed him under the provisions of the Rent Restrictions Acts? In those circumstances a dwelling, which might be a flat or an entire building, may become vacant. Can an owner resume possession or is he bound to let the premises again to some other person who becomes a statutory tenant? That may be a rather extraordinary way of becoming a statutory tenant, but I assume that that is what will happen. In the circumstances I have mentioned, will the landlord be entitled himself to resume possession? If, in fact, the Rent Restrictions Acts applied in the ordinary way, the landlord would certainly be entitled to resume possession where the premises became vacant.
  In regard to repairs it appears that, under Clause 4 (2), paragraph (a), terminal compensation under the Compensation (Defence) Act, 1939, becomes payable when a local authority give up possession—that is to say, one week or there-
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  abouts after the owner accepts the invitation mentioned in that clause. I do not wish to say anything defamatory about licensees of requisitioned premises, but the bare truth is that the majority of requisitioned premises in this country are in a most deplorable state of repair and require a great deal to be done to them. In order to carry out the desired repairs it may be necessary for landlords to have very wide powers of entry and, if necessary, to be able to go to the county court and obtain possession in order to carry out those repairs. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will look at that point between now and the Committee stage to see whether it is covered by the Bill as at present drafted.
  With regard to terminal compensation payable under the 1939 Act, the extraordinary position is that an owner of premises may receive compensation but is not compelled to use it in carrying out any repairs. If he has let the premises to a tenant there may be some contractual arrangement made between him and the tenant as to what ought to be done with the money; but the ordinary owner-occupier who receives terminal compensation under the 1939 Act is not compelled, as far as I know, to spend that money on repairs to the premises. Last but not least, I should like to know whether the provisions of the Housing (Repairs and Rents) Act, 1954, are in any way excluded by the provisions of the present Bill. Suppose that an owner of premises complies with the requirements of that Act and spends the necessary money in carrying out repairs within the required time; will he be entitled to increase the rent of the statutory tenant? I consider Clause 4 is important. If I have raised any "red herrings" I hope they may be struck out; but if any suggestion of mine is considered worthy of consideration, I hope Her Majesty's Government will consider it.
  3.18 p.m.
  THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, it is hardly surprising that at this particular time in the fortunes of the country many issues should be conjured up in order that one or other of the Parties might make a satisfactory appeal to the electorate. I was not in the least surprised, therefore, to hear the opening observations of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that this measure might well have fallen by the wayside had it not been one which was

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  devised entirely for the relief of landowners. I thought that, once again, the noble Lord was drawing a red herring across the trail. There is no foundation whatsoever for the charge that, as the result of the passage into law of this Bill, many people will be homeless by 1960 or (in the words of the noble Lord opposite) will be living in a state of uncertainty or deep anxiety. I would suggest, subject to correction, that the noble Lord probably would never have made that charge without an ear to popular appeal. Perhaps he will forgive me for saying that it may be because he is bankrupt of all criticism of Her Majesty's Government. The noble Lord reminded me of that old story of the blind man who was searching in a dark room for a black hat which was not there.
  LORD SILKIN: The noble Earl says he speaks subject to correction and I should therefore like to take the first opportunity of correcting him. I had thought of making this same speech, apart from the reference to the Election, even had there been no Election impending.
  THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I naturally accept what the noble Lord says, but obviously he will not mind my observations as a result of his speech.
  What is the position of those now living in requisitioned houses? Are they threatened with wholesale eviction after 1960? Is their security of tenure seriously jeopardised? The 90,000 families who are living in these requisitioned properties are not all people who were suffering from enemy action. Let me remind the noble Lord that at the end of the war there were some 71,500 properties which had been requisitioned. After the war, some 52,000 extra properties were added; and since the end of the war, about 62,000 properties have been released. So it seems to me that this is not a matter of dealing merely with those people who were bombed out of their original homes by enemy action and had to move elsewhere. Of course, neither my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing nor, indeed, Her Majesty's Government ever contemplated releasing requisitioned houses without making adequate provision for the existing occupants. As I say, the Bill does nothing to make any one homeless at all.
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  I wonder whether the noble Lord opposite really believes that the local authority associations would have approved the proposals in this Bill if the noble Lord's fears were genuine. Let me remind the House what they said. They said this:
  "We consider that the proposals provide a reasonable and workable scheme for bringing emergency requisitioning procedure to an end."
  With due respect to the housing obligations of the borough councils, between now and 1960 many occupants of these requisitioned houses will move out of their present premises into council houses or elsewhere. In fact, moves of that sort, as the noble Lord knows better than I do, are proceeding continuously; and since the introduction of the Bill in another place the number of requisitioned properties has already shown a decrease. If the noble Lord will turn to the Bill, he will find that, under Clause 3, a local authority who find difficulty in providing alternative accommodation for the inhabitants of a requisitioned house may retain possession of that house by agreement with the Ministry——
  LORD SILKIN: Is that not only until requisitioning generally comes to an end, and not after that?
  THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I am coming to that. I am trying to deal with individual points. Local authorities can, subject to the Minister's agreement, retain possession of these premises.
  We go from there to Clause 4. There are, I am told, a number of owners of requisitioned properties who would be willing to accept the licensee as a statutory tenant where the provisions of the Rent Acts apply. It is believed—I think not without some truth—that many of the owners of requisitioned premises already have other houses in which they are living. They would, therefore, be prepared to let their houses in accordance with the terms of the Rent Acts, more especially as they have an opportunity of obtaining some compensation under Clause 4. Under Clause 5, if the owner, having appealed to the court for the release of his house on grounds of hardship, obtains it, then the local authority will provide the occupants with other accommodation. The noble Lord may well say: Where? Well, those individuals can be housed under Clause 3, which gives the local authority power to retain possession

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  with the consent of the Minister, of certain houses. And I have no doubt whatever that there will not be all that number of cases which will go to the courts, which will judge, as they are doing to-day, which is the greater hardship—that of the owner or that of the existing tenant. In any event, let me assure the noble Lord that the cost of proceedings may certainly be borne by the owner; they may certainly be borne by the local authority, but they will never, in fact, be borne by the tenant.
  We come next to Clause 6 which enables a local authority to make the owner an offer to purchase the house. Having obtained that house by purchase, the local authority will clearly be able to put into that particular property any tenants of the present requisitioned houses. Local authorities, as the noble Lord knows well, can also rent houses they need to retain after 1960. I am advised that there are a considerable number of owners of requisitioned properties who would be perfectly willing to let their property to a local authority for a period of ten or fifteen years. Again, in London (and this is primarily, as the noble Lord agrees, a London problem) a local authority may well have to provide alternative accommodation by purchase; and they already possess compulsory purchase powers under the Housing Act, 1936. It is true that we hope these compulsory powers will be used only in a last resort. From advice which I have received, I have reason to believe that there are many owners who would be prepared to offer their houses for sale at a reasonable and proper price.
  I hope that I have—I will not say persuaded, but moved, the noble Lord to believe me when I say that, under the terms of this measure, there is no reason whatsoever why tenants of requisitioned properties should, either before or after 1960, have any fear about finding themselves thrown out of their present houses. The noble Lord was good enough to give me some information which tended to show that he was thinking of putting down an Amendment at a later stage of the Bill, to see whether it would not be possible to extend the five-year period by a further two years. My immediate answer is that I do not think that that is really necessary. If it had been necessary,
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  I imagine that the local authority associations would have impressed that particular point upon my right honourable friend himself.
  I pass on to reply, very briefly, to one or two points which were made by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. He asked whether there was a definition of "statutory tenant" in Clause 4. There is no definition of the actual words "statutory tenant," because it was thought that those words themselves served to emphasise that the tenant will, in fact, have the protection of the Rent Acts. Then the noble Lord asked me what would happen where, under, I think, Clause 5, the owner accepted a licensee as a statutory tenant and that tenant vacated the property or died without a legal successor. What would happen to the house? I think it is clear that in those circumstances the landlord could occupy the property himself or sell it. In short, in those circumstances the house would revert to the owner under the ordinary arrangements of the Rent Acts at the present time. There were various other detailed points which the noble Lord put to me, and upon which I will let him have a reply in due course—no doubt, he will put down Amendments on the next stage of the Bill. In passing, he wished to know whether an owner taking advantage of Clause 7 (which enables an owner to modernise his house or to convert it into flats) would he be eligible to secure aid under the Housing Act, 1954. The answer is, that he would be able to secure aid under that Act, as well as under the Housing Act, 1949, and that his premises would then be derequisitioned on the understanding that he offered tenancies to those people who were nominated by the local authority.
  I hope that I have answered the main questions addressed to me. As it is now getting late in the Session, I wonder whether the House would allow me, in view of the fact that we have postponed the Second Reading of the Bill to have the Committee stage for Thursday, the day after to-morrow, in order that on that occasion the Bill may pass through its remaining stages in this House.
  On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

  WEDGWOOD BENN (RENUNCIATION) BILL [H.L.]
  3.33 p.m.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE LORD BISHOP OF RIPON: My Lords, I rise to present a Petition to this House as follows:
  To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, the Humble Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the City and County of Bristol.
  "Sheweth, that the Letters Patent creating the Viscounty of Stansgate provide inter alia that the heir lawfully begotten shall succeed to the Title on the demise of the present Viscount,
  "That the Heir Male Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn is one of their Members of Parliament
  "And that if the said Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn succeeds to the said title the Burgesses of Bristol will then be deprived of one of their representatives freely elected according to law:
  "Wherefore your Petitioners most humbly pray that provision may be made by Act of Parliament enabling their Member the aforesaid Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn to renounce irrevocably the Name State Degree Style Dignity Title and Honour of Viscount Stansgate and all the Rights Privileges Pre-eminences Immunities and Advantages that would otherwise descend to him by virtue of the Letters Patent, so that he may be enabled to continue to serve Her Majesty's Loyal Subjects the Burgesses of Bristol as a Commoner in the Commons House of Parliament for so long as he may be elected as one of their representatives according to law.
  "And your Petitioners will ever pray et cetera."
  The Petition is signed by Gilbert G. Adams, Lord Mayor, and A. Pickard, Town Clerk, and affixed to it is the seal of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the City of Bristol.
  I also have permission to read a statement from the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Bristol, as follows:
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  "My Lords, I trust that I may have your Lordships' indulgence in making this brief statement in connection with the Petition from the Lord Mayor and Burgesses of Bristol in support of Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn's plea to be allowed to resign his claim to the succession to his father's Peerage.
  "I have signed the petition, and I should have wished to speak personally if it had been possible for me to be present in your Lordships' House to-day. With the permission of the Lord Chancellor, I am asking the Lord Bishop of Ripon to make the statement on my behalf.
  "On the legal questions arising from Mr. Wedgwood Benn's plea I should not venture to express an opinion. But I hope I may be allowed to say that from personal knowledge I am entirely satisfied as to the motives which have actuated him in making it. And I may add that I believe that it carries with it the support of many of the citizens of Bristol who know his work in his constituency."
  LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask whether we are debating whether this Petition be received? It appears to me to be most improper to receive a political Petition from the Mayor and Corporation of one of our cities.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT WOOLTON): My Lords, I am advised that the Petition is quite in order, but, if I may say so, it was a little unusual for a speech to be made by deputy, as the Lord Bishop of Bristol apparently has done in the latter part of the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Ripon. Otherwise I am advised that the presentation of the Petition is quite in order.
  LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I beg the noble Viscount's pardon, but he has not answered my question. My question was whether it was in order to receive a Petition. A Petition may be presented, but are we obliged to receive it?
  EARL JOWITT: My Lords, it is the very foundation of our law that any subject of the Crown has the right to petition. I think that that is an immemorial right. We do not debate whether the Petition be received or not: we debate whether we will act upon it.
  VISCOUNT WOOLTON: My Lords, I do not think we shall further the Business of the House by dealing with this question. We have a difficult and contentious issue to face, and it may be for the convenience of the House if we go on with that part of the business.
  Ordered, That the Petition lie on the Table.
  3.36 p.m.
  VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, on one point, as it has suddenly arisen, may I say that I altered the date of this Bill especially to suit the convenience of the House. If the original date had been adhered to, the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Bristol would have been here. I should like to express my indebtedness to him for taking this opportunity of expressing his opinion through the agency of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Ripon, who is perfectly in order in presenting the Petition. This is an unusual experience for me. It is the first time I have appeared in this House under episcopal auspices. In obedience to the practice of the House, I disclose at once my personal interest in this Bill. Everything I say and every argument I advance must be assessed in the light of my relationship to the Petitioner. On the other hand, if your Lordships seem to detect a feeling of father for son, that is, of course, a fortification of that hereditary principle on which so much of the foundation of this House depends.
  Perhaps your Lordships will allow me—I will do it briefly, but I am compelled to do it—to give the personal narrative which lies behind this Petition. In 1941, I was informed by the Prime Minister's Deputy that the Prime Minister wished me to say whether I would consent to the putting forward of my name for the honour of a Peerage. I was very proud. I thought it was a very great distinction and I intimated the same. When the Patent actually was published, it was accompanied by an unusual document which said it was not an honour or distinction—that is quite natural and I accept that—but it was a measure of State policy. I think one can detect the authorship of that fine phrase. I understood the statement to mean that I was sent here to do a certain job of work, which was, I understood, to strengthen and stimulate the elements of the Opposition in this House. Well, I have done my best. And, if your Lordships will permit me, I must say that in my judgment I have not always received the applause which my efforts deserved. The acceptance of that offer has given me thirteen years of happy friendship, courtesy and tolerance, which will always warm my heart.
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  I had three sons. The eldest boy, Michael, I consulted. He informed me that he intended to attempt to obtain Holy Orders, and he was not interested in the House of Commons. In any case, the Peerage and the priesthood would be a double bar. When he knew, he was as proud as I was about it, and he willingly accepted. The second son, the present Petitioner, was a schoolboy, rather a chatterbox, and I did not consider it necessary to consult him at all. I now wonder very much whether I was right or wrong. But it was difficult, and I did not consult him. I can remember that when the announcement was made in The Times, he was very angry and abused me. But in point of fact our minds were on something quite different; and that was the war. Both of these boys were thinking of one thing, and that was how they could manage to get into the Air Force, as volunteers, before they were called up. They both succeeded and became pilots. Unfortunately, and unhappily for me, my eldest son was killed.
  There is nothing unusual about that story; it must be a story that could be told of many families in your Lordships' House and in the country. But it had this result. It heaped on to the unwilling shoulders of this young man honours which were going to debar him from all the ambitions of his life. He wanted to enter Parliament, and he had most extraordinary good fortune, because when Sir Stafford Cripps resigned the Bristol constituency invited him to be their candidate. Bristol is a famous constituency—it has had connections with Burke and Cripps. The Petitioner was adopted and elected; he has twice been elected for Bristol and is now to present himself for a third time at the polls. His borough, as we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, to whom I tender my sincere thanks, is anxious to retain his services. What he wants to know is this: is there any way in which your Lordships' House can permit him to continue to render that public service? That is the sole purpose of this Bill.
  There were three methods open to him. He is a Member of Parliament, and he could have presented a Bill in the Commons House. I have the honour of being a Member of your Lordships' House, and I could have presented a Bill in your Lordships' House. But

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  he took a third course and presented a Petition to Parliament, like the Petition that the right reverend Prelate presented a moment ago, which is the right of every Member and of all lieges of Her Majesty—and I was somewhat surprised to see that right challenged to-day in debate. He took the course open to any one of Her Majesty's lieges and presented a Petition to this House.
  LORD SALTOUN: I did not challenge the right of anybody to present a Petition. I said that it was a question of whether the House would receive that Petition.
  VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I do not want to revive that matter. I shall follow what the noble Viscount, the Deputy Leader of the House, said, and I think it is better now to leave that issue. However, the Petitioner took the course of petitioning the House. That was, first of all, the most respectful course that he could take. But it had another advantage, because it meant that this issue was brought before your Lordships' House, and it is an important constitutional principle that questions affecting, the Peerage should be dealt with primarily in this House. Such a Bill could not have been offered in another House, and he put it before a Committee for examination. The Committee was set up, and it consisted of six distinguished members of your Lordships' House, including the Lord Chairman of Committees and three noble and learned Lords. They devoted a whole morning to a careful hearing and cross-examination of the Petitioner.
  Let me remind your Lordships of what the Petition was. It was not a Petition for the reform of your Lordships' House. It had nothing whatever to do with the reform of your Lordships' House. It was a personal Petition that he, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, should have permission to continue in his career as a Member of the Lower House. That is all it was. He was not interested in the question of the reform of your Lordships' House and did not touch upon it. I shall revert to this point more than once in the few remarks I have to make, but I emphasise now that this had nothing to do with the reform of your Lordships' House. The Committee reported briefly—I myself could have wished that they had gone into more detail. But what did they say? They said, not that the Petition was bad,
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  or that they disagreed with it, but that "This is a matter which touches a larger issue, and therefore you must bring it in as a Public Bill." That was their Report, and the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simonds, quoted a famous declaration made by Lord Shaftesbury in the case of the Purbeck Viscounty in the seventeenth century. This is what Lord Shaftesbury said:
  "It is a dangerous doctrine to say that such legislation is only your concern"—
  he was addressing the Petitioner—
  "and not the interest and concern of the whole nation."
  On that same point, the Lord Chairman of Committees, Lord Drogheda, said:
  "… but are there reasons why it should not be presented as a Public Bill in the House of Lords?"
  Guided by that authoritative advice, the Petitioner decided to abandon his Personal Bill—although many of the features are the same—and to introduce that element of generality which appeared to be the desire of the Committee and the guidance of Lord Shaftesbury; and the Bill is now a Public Bill. Your Lordships will find in the preamble of the Bill, on the second page, the sense of Lord Shaftesbury's dictum, which declares that a matter of this kind is a matter of public interest.
  What objections can there possibly be to this Bill? The first objection—and it would be very powerful indeed—would be this: "Here is a young man who finds himself unexpectedly called to high estate with great responsibilities—and that often happens in your Lordships' House. It is his duty to bear the burden and he has no right to attempt to shift it. This is the organisation of the State, and it is his duty to carry the load." But in this instance the very reverse is the case. This young man is carrying the burden of public duty; he is serving the public. Everyone knows that, first of all, a young man like that could not afford to come here; and secondly, there is not the scope. He wants to go on serving his constituents. Parliament has rather changed even in my time. A Member of Parliament occupies a dignified and important position in his constituency. I do not want to say that he is a sort of welfare officer, but he is a sort of counsellor of good to his constituents. It has nothing to do with Party opinion: once a man has been elected he is the ser-

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  vant of all constituents, whatever their Party may be. I imagine that the relationship of a Member of Parliament to his constituents to-day is something like the best tradition of paternal interest which existed in this country before the days of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, to base yourselves on noblesse oblige does not support the case at all, because the public duty is presently being discharged.
  The second argument that might be produced against the Bill is this: "It is a general principle and it must await the general reform of your Lordships' House." I have tried to point out that there is nothing whatever in this Bill that affects the Constitution of your Lordships' House. The Petitioner does not ask that later on he should be Lord Stansgate, M.P. That request has been made before. It was made sixty years ago by that famous trio of Lord Curzon, Lord Selborne and Lord Midleton, and that did involve the structure of the House; and complaint was made recently on the same lines in regard to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. But that is not what this Petitioner asks. He asks that he should be allowed to remain a commoner. He is not of noble blood; he is a commoner and he wants to remain a commoner. That is what the whole Bill is about.
  The Committee said: "This is a general principle and you must permit other people in the same state to have the same redress." I admit that. But are there any other people in the same state? I have never heard of any Peer or son of a Peer coming forward and pleading that he should be allowed to renounce the whole thing and remain a commoner. If such a thing occurred, I think it would have to be dealt with on these lines. In fact, the Titles (Deprivations) Bill—although that is the other side of the case; we were then dealing with enemies of the State—would probably be the model on which we should work. But there is no sign whatever that the concession of this Bill would expose your Lordships to a flood of renouncers. If that is so, are you going to grant the permission for this young man to remain for life "Mr. Benn"—I hope "M.P."?
  Just one final word. There is a great deal of talk about the position of the House of Lords at this time. There is
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  some legitimate criticism. We have great disadvantages. There is the disadvantage of the large number of Members of your Lordships' House who, for reasons that are quite intelligible and, honourable, cannot give their attendance in this House. That is a handicap, because whenever anyone wishes to criticise this House the absentee Members are always mentioned. But why add to a difficulty that you cannot get rid of? Why add a further injustice by so pressing the hereditary principle that you wish to snatch from public service in another place somebody who is unwilling to come? To put it quite simply, I would say: "I plead that you should adapt the great traditions of this House, or be able to adapt them, in such a way as to satisfy the needs of personal justice." Or, if I put it in another sense, I should say: "I am pleading for fair play, and I have never heard in this House a plea for fair play which has not been listened to."
  That is all I have to say. I have only one witness to call, but he is a powerful witness. At the beginning of this business the Petitioner, who was well aware from the published works of the then Prime Minister how he felt about this matter—there was a telegram published in one of the War Books on the subject—wrote to the then Prime Minister and asked for his support. The Prime Minister said, quite naturally, that as Prime Minister it was impossible for him to come forward and support the plea, however right, of an individual Member of Parliament. But as soon as Sir Winston Churchill had vacated his office the Petitioner, who is a rather persistent fellow, returned to the charge and wrote again to the ex-Prime Minister. I will read in its full context the reply which he received. It is as follows:
  Chartwell, Westerham, Kent.
  9 April, 1955.
  My dear Wedgwood Benn,
  As I wrote to you confidentially in September, 1953, I certainly feel yours is a very hard case, and I am personally strongly in favour of sons having the right to renounce irrevocably the peerages they inherit from their fathers. This would not of course prevent them from accepting another peerage, if they were offered one, later on.
  Yours sincerely,
  Winston S. Churchill."
  I beg to move.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Stansgate.)
  3.53 p.m.
  EARL JOWITT: My Lords, I am going to speak for only a moment or two. I have one fact to add to the facts which the noble Viscount has stated. He is, as your Lordships heard when he made his speech just now, full of vigour and energy, but I believe I am right in saying that he is within a fortnight of his seventy-eighth birthday. I hope he will be with us for many years but, of course, life being what it is, we cannot gamble on that. If he should die before some remedial Bill is passed, then I fear it would be for ever too late to give this boy the relief for which he asks. I do not regard this matter as in any shape or form a Party question. So far as I know, my Party have not pronounced upon it at all. I believe it is a question upon which we can each use our own judgment and our own discretion. I would echo the words of the noble Viscount who has just spoken, and say to your Lordships: My Lords, why can we not give this young man what he is asking for? What great principle is infringed? Believing, as I do, that no great principle is infringed, I would most humbly ask your Lordships to give this Bill your support.
  3.55 p.m.
  EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, my excuse for my temerity, as a comparatively new Member of your Lordships' House, in speaking on this Bill, which does raise questions of high constitutional principle, is that I feel very strongly on this subject, and I warmly support the Bill. If I may commence on a personal note, may I say that it is a pleasure to me, after forty years of friendship and mutual regard for the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate (which has not prevented us from attacking each other, both in this House and in another place, on almost every occasion on which we have spoken), to be on his side. It is perhaps as well that we are not often in concert in your Lordships' House, because we might be a considerable nuisance to your Lordships if we were, since neither of us minds treading on people's toes—and there are a great number of people in this country who deserve to have their toes trodden upon.
  I agree with the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, that there is little that need be said on this Bill. In fact, I associate myself not only with what the mover of the Bill has said but also with what the
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  noble and learned Earl has said. The main support for the Bill rests on one point; and I would, with all courtesy, invite my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, and anyone else who is going to speak against this Bill, to answer this question, which is the question which really arises: why should a Member of another place be compelled to vacate his seat and become a Member of this House because he succeeds to a Peerage? And why should he do so when his desire to renounce that right is supported by the influential support which comes in the present case from the ancient city of Bristol? I would further ask opponents of the Bill to answer this specific question: what common sense, fairness or logic is there in asking a Member of another place, who has been elected to that House and who is anxious to remain there, compulsorily to become a Member of your Lordships' House? Where is the logic? Where is the common sense? Where is the fairness? That is a question which should be answered.
  We are not living in mediaeligval England or pre-1914 Austria, with its sixteen quarterings and its strict demarcation between those who have titles and those who have not. We belong to a modern State, and your Lordships' House is supposed to be the Second Chamber of a modern State. That is its function—whether it performs it or not is not a question which we need discuss on this occasion. It is the Senate—it is the Second Chamber—of a modern State. If I may say so with the deepest respect, it should behave as a Senate. It should not say, "We cannot do this because of precedent of 300 or 400 years ago; because of people long dead and forgotten; because some constitutional expert says that it cannot be done." It ought to say, "In accordance with the greatness of our position, and with the greatness of the country of whose Constitution we are an integral part, we should do the fair and common-sense thing where a clear opportunity to do so is presented, as it is in the case of this Bill."
  I hope that those questions will be answered and I hope the Bill will pass. At the risk of offending sonic of your Lordships, I should like to point out what will happen if it does not. Any intelligent observer will say, "On a Tuesday afternoon, in a House representing some 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. of those who might

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  sit in that House but who do not, and many of whom never will, the House of Lords, supposed to be the Second Chamber of the head of a Great Commonwealth, refused to do something merely on the ground that it might cause an awkward precedent." I hope that that will not occur and that, if the Bill is not passed this afternoon, the noble Viscount will revert to the matter in another Parliament, because, although, as he most truly said, it is not, and should not be, concerned with the general question of the reform of your Lordships' House, it raises a very important principle.
  In conclusion, I must say this—again at the risk of offending some. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, in one of the most impressive speeches I have ever heard in fifty years of public life in either House of Parliament, addressed your Lordships' House the other day on the subject of the reform of the composition of this House. May I say to all the noble Lords on this side of the House that I hope they will have regard to his words, which were received without a murmur of disapproval. Lord Samuel said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 191 (No. 31), col. 842]:
  "My Lords, this House is dying of inanition before our eyes."
  I would add that, if your Lordships' House appeared to be living in an age of armour and broadswords, instead of in a modern State, it could kill itself, for even in this country ridicule can kill; and if any British institution does anything that is foolish it suffers thereby in the opinion of the people who really count—that is, the great mass of the population.
  4.2 p.m.
  LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, with your permission, I should be glad of the opportunity to make a few comments on this most interesting Bill. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, has, I think, tried to use two arguments to prove the same thing. He stressed in the earlier part of his speech that this was a Bill affecting an individual: that the only person who would be concerned was his own son; and he gave powerful arguments why this House should permit his son that privilege which he asks for him. On the other hand, he also made reference to the fact, and inferentially still makes reference to the fact, that it is impossible to legislate for an individual:
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  that the effect of passing this Bill would be very wide. Here in this Bill, in Clause 3, the noble Viscount says that the Bill shall be taken as the prototype (if I may use that word) of the action that should be taken in the future by any noble Lord like-minded with himself. That implies that either now or in the future there may be other noble Lords placed somewhat in the same position as is the noble Viscount who would also desire that this exceptional privilege—because such it is—should be accorded to their sons.
  Therefore, it appears to me that this is not an individual Bill at all; indeed, it is a Bill which affects the Constitution of this House in a very material manner. It proposes to introduce into our constitutional practice something quite new. It proposes also to open the door to something very much wider, to which I will refer in a few moments—and not entirely with disapprobation. I have great sympathy with the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, in his particular plea, but it is the inference of what he proposes to do and its effect upon the present and the future which I think is so vastly more important than the actual subject, his own son, which he brings to your Lordships' notice. The very fact and the mere fact that the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Bristol, through the mouth of the Bishop of their diocese, should be of the opinion that Mr. Benn should be permitted to continue to be a Member of the House of Commons, representing them for so long as the electors choose to vote for him—and, after all, it is always possible that Mr. Benn may be sacrificing the substance for the shadow; one cannot be sure—
  VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I should like to make a point here. Of course, by this Bill, his renunciation is irrevocable. It has nothing whatever to do with whether or not he remains a Member of Parliament.
  LORD HASTINGS: Quite true. The noble Viscount was perfectly justified in interrupting me. He may have misunderstood me. When I said "the substance," I meant his seat in another place. He may be sacrificing the substance, a place in one of the Houses of the Legislature, for the shadow—in fact, for the electoral hazards. But that is by the way; that is his own business and nobody else's. I can,

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  of course, imagine certain cities in England where, if their Lord Mayor, aldermen and burgesses were to petition the House of Lords in favour of a member of a certain political Party, there would be a howl of execration. It has not happened in the city of Bristol, and so all is well. It does not affect the issue one way or the other. I do not think that this Petition is very relevant, but what is relevant is the effect that the passage of this Bill would have upon the future Constitution of your Lordships' House.
  There is, unfortunately, in this Bill a clause which I think must make it wholly unacceptable. It is to the effect that, whereas the heir to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, is asking to be permitted to renounce the Peerage (I hope that it will be a long time before he succeeds to it), Lord Stansgate is asking that the next heir should be allowed to come back into the House of Lords if he so wishes. I do not think anybody could tolerate that. You cannot make a Peerage a convertible commodity; you cannot do that. You cannot create a family, so to speak, which with one generation is in the House of Lords, and with the other is in the House of Commons, and with the next generation is in the House of Lords and with the next is not even in either House. I think that would be unconstitutional beyond belief. What would happen? I do not want to turn this serious subject into ridicule, but the appropriate supporter for the coat of arms for a Peerage of that kind would be a Jack-in-the-Box. I do not think such a thing could possibly be permitted.
  If the noble Viscount were endeavouring to convert his hereditary Peerage into a Life Peerage, then, not that we wish the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, to be exterminated—very far from it—he would have a vastly stronger case than he has now by suggesting in his Bill that it is going to be the will of that particular family to sit either in this House or in another place. You cannot do that. Let Mr. Benn renounce his inheritance if he pleases, with the permission of your Lordships' House; but let that be final. That must be the end, not only for himself but also for his family. Somebody—I think it was the noble Earl, Lord Winterton—said that that would not debar him from accepting another Peerage if it were offered to him. That would be piling
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  Pelion on Ossa. You cannot do that. It would reduce the whole thing to ridicule.
  I beg the noble Viscount to see it from the point of view from which I am looking at it, which is not unsympathetic to him in any way. I want to look at it from the standpoint of its effect on this House. If that particular clause which enables, or would enable, the family of Benn to revive its Peerage at will were eliminated from this Bill, then it would be open to any noble Lord who had accepted an hereditary Peerage to move in a Bill of this character that his heir should not be encumbered with that Peerage. It is not very many weeks since, more or less on the initiative of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, we were having a most interesting debate in which, as my noble friend Lord Winterton mentioned, the noble Viscount made a remarkable speech—so remarkable that I believe I could quote a great deal of it word for word: it made so great an impression upon my mind. But during that debate it became perfectly clear that there was a consensus of opinion on all sides of the House that the creation of Life Peerages would be of immense advantage. There may have been some who disagreed, but I think the general consensus of opinion was in that direction.
  My Lords, here we have what one might call the foundation of a Bill which would enable that proposal to be put into effect. Let us imagine this Bill without what, to me, is its objectionable feature—namely, the re-creation or the recrudescence, the rising up from the ashes, of the Wedgwood Benn of the third generation. Eliminating that, it would then be possible for a man of distinction, on any side of the House, who was anxious to take his part in legislation and to pull his weight in managing the affairs of this country, but whose other considerations made it difficult for him to accept the Peerage, to accept the Peerage that was offered to him with the certain knowledge that all he had to do would be to introduce into Parliament a Bill founded upon this precedent inviting the House to excuse his heir from succeeding to the Peerage. Thereby, without in any way contravening the Royal Prerogative, he would have converted his hereditary Peerage into a Life Peerage. The Crown would continue to create hereditary Peerages as before, and it

  575
  would be within the volition of the individual recipient of the Peerage to determine whether he wished to take advantage of the hereditary principle conferred by the Crown upon his Peerage or to abrogate it by introducing a Bill of this character, thereby turning his own Peerage into a Life Peerage.
  There is immense value in this Bill from that point of view; but, with all respect to the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, I do not think that any Member of this House can, on reflection, really permit a Peerage to go under and to come up, and again to go down and to come up—the choice must be final. If the noble Viscount wants to say, "Well, I have to make up my mind to this, difficult though it is; my son does not wish to inherit my Peerage," very well: his son's son must not inherit it either. This must be a Life Peerage. That, apparently, would be acceptable to the noble Viscount's heir who, I understand, has a son of his own, though he is at present only a baby and therefore cannot be consulted. If there were three generations of age they might be consulted. In this case I do not think it is necessary. I do not know whether the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, intends to take this matter to a Division, but I could not vote for him because of that particular clause.
  May I remind him of just one other matter that may not have occurred to him—namely, that if his son is permitted by Act of Parliament to renounce his succession to the Peerage he has no nobility to hand on to his son (I think that is constitutional law, though I am not sure—I am not a constitutional lawyer) because he would not have inherited his Peerage. I would remind your Lordships why I say that. I hope the noble Viscount will forgive me. I have had the great privilege of sitting in your Lordships' House for fifty years. In the course of that long time I have often been concerned in questions of successions to Peerages, although not exactly of this kind. I often had to consult Sir Claud Schuster, when he was Clerk to the Crown, in matters of that kind; so I am not unfamiliar with them. Where an heir to a Peerage has omitted to claim the right of succession and has never taken his seat, the difficulty of establishing that right in that man's heir is almost
  576
  insuperable. I would suggest to the noble Viscount that in fact that repudiation of inheritance constitutes an abrogation of nobility and that he would have no nobility to pass on to his own son. I think I am right in saying that, though I stand subject to correction.
  I will not weary the House any longer. I hope that the noble Viscount will realise that I am in no sense unsympathetic to his particular view; on the contrary, I think there is a great deal in it. But I am afraid of its effect upon the future. I should hope that if this Bill happens not to meet with the general approval of the House, or if it does not go to a Division, another Bill might be introduced in a new Parliament. I hope that such a Bill would be redrafted to give the noble Viscount exactly what he wants and, at the same time, would be widened in its effect, so as to make it perfectly clear that it would be open to any Peer, or to any person who might be offered a Peerage, that he could accept it without fear that it would have to descend to his own heir. All he would have to do would be to introduce a Bill of this character and thereby renounce the Peerage on behalf of his heir. Such a Bill would be of immense advantage to many people.
  I do not for a moment suppose that the noble Viscount has this in mind, but he would make a great mistake if he thought that membership of the House of Commons is the only reason why Members of another place or persons of distinction are chary of accepting a Peerage. There are many other more potent and enduring reasons than that. Electoral hazards sometimes govern these cases. When I suggested that the noble Viscount's son was sacrificing substance for a shadow, that is what I meant; he is, of course, subject to electoral hazards. Even the Lord Mayor of Bristol cannot ensure his return to the House of Commons. There are other cases which are dependent not upon electoral hazards but upon more far reaching things, and it is to them that I should like to give the opportunity which Lord Stansgate here seeks for his son.
  I have spoken long enough. Because of what I have said, I should oppose this Bill, but I should like to see a somewhat similar Bill introduced in the next Parliament, when we can deal with the subject

  577
  on an altogether wider footing. The noble Marquess the Leader of the House has already proposed to this House that a Committee should be set up to inquire into Standing Orders and other matters. I hope that before too long that Committee will be set up. I am hoping that its terms of reference will be sufficiently wide to make its recommendations or its Report of real use to this House, to see exactly what we can or cannot do. Nobody is more anxious than I not only to ensure regular attendance to the business of this House, but to ensure that all Parties are properly and equitably represented in it. That is what we want in a Legislature. I believe that the creation of Life Peerages, or, rather, the conversion of hereditary Peerages into Life Peerages, might be the solution of the whole subject. I am greatly obliged to your Lordships for having listened to me for so long. I apologise for having delayed this debate for longer than perhaps I ought to have done.
  4.20 p.m.
  LORD ELTON: My Lords, we have heard the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, so often and so gallantly pleading forlorn and dubious causes on behalf of strangers (ranging from Communist scouts upwards, or downwards) that I am sure that on personal grounds, and particularly after listening to what one can only call the deeply moving speech of the noble Viscount, now that he has picked a horse from his own stable we should all wish to see it placed. But I am sorry to say that the noble Viscount has on this occasion entered it for the wrong race. For I hold strongly that this is not the time or the manner in which to debate this particular subject. There is very little to be said for what the Romans used to call a privilegium, the private law passed on behalf of an individual, however deserving the individual. Very naturally, almost everything that was said by the first three speakers emphasised the hardship on the individual, rather than the public interest. It seems to me that if the thesis that the heir of a Peer should be permitted, if he so wishes, to contract out of his privileges and duties, should ever commend itself to the majority of your Lordships' House, then it ought to be embodied in legislation of much wider scope than this.
  578
  If the Conservative Party should be victorious in the forthcoming Election we all know (and I for one am sorry to know it) that Her Majesty's next Government is likely to be in gestation with a scheme for an operation of some kind—major or minor—on the body of your Lordships' House, Then, if ever, would be the time to debate whether or not it is in the public interest for any Peer's son, and not only Mr. Wedgwood Benn, to be permitted to renounce his heritage. Even then, and even if the issue should be in that way suitably widened, I hope Her Majesty's Government, or a majority of your Lordships, would dissent from the thesis embodied in this Bill. For I believe it is the fact that this House is known to be a synthesis of heredity Peers with newcomers which goes very far to account not only for its high prestige here and overseas, but for the character and quality of its debates. But once your Lordships admit the principle of contracting out, it becomes dangerously easy for the tradition to grow up that the progressive, the forward-looking, the high-spirited course for a man to take (and I am deliberately selecting the hackneyed phrases which would probably be used), is to run away from the situation into which he has been born.
  I do not want to use offensive words, and needless to say I am not thinking of the Petitioner when I use them; I am thinking rather of all those to whom this principle must extend once it is accepted. I am remembering, first, what noble Lords know only too well: that there are still many duties and opportunities outside Parliament out of which a man would be contracting if he renounced his succession. I am also remembering (and I think that up to a point this is a real analogy) how, a generation ago, it was the habit of Bernard Shaw and others to represent the young man who found his family irksome and his relations unresponsive, and ran off to join some more congenial coterie elsewhere, as having acted courageously by breaking out of the restricted atmosphere of the home circle and forcing his way into the wider freedoms of the great world outside. But it was G. K. Chesterton who pointed out that, on the contrary, the home circle, with its psychological conflicts and its potential dead-ends, was nevertheless the real world, the given world with which

  579
  Providence had confronted that young man; and that by running off into some selected backwater of the like-minded he was in fact turning his back upon the reality and taking refuge in an artificial, selected world of his own. That is far from being a complete analogy but it has a very real relevance. After all, if we consider this question purely from the angle of public interest, no one can overlook the fact that there are many millions of men and women on whom another place can draw for its membership. It is very unlikely to be starved of able Members if some hundreds of men continue, in the familiar words of the Catechism,
  "to do their duty in that state of life into which it shall please God to call them."
  LORD GRANTCHESTER: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, has said precisely, though in much more eloquent phrases, what I should have liked to say on this matter. I need not repeat what he has said, but I would appeal to the noble Viscount to withdraw this Bill and to introduce on another occasion a Bill along the lines indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings.
  4.28 p.m.
  LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am bound to say that I am a little surprised. I remember that when the noble Marquess the Leader of the House discussed some measure for reforming the Constitution of this House, while the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, was always ready to co-operate, noble Lords opposite steadfastly refused, and the noble Marquess has had to go forward without their support. Yet to-day, if my guess is right, we have the noble Lords opposite resolutely supporting a reform of the House for the sake of only one person. My noble friends, Lord Hastings and Lord Elton, have pointed out that this is a very bad example of a privilegium, a constitutional law passed for the benefit of one person. Until the noble and learned Earl who leads the Opposition spoke, I had always understood that every lawyer, and everybody who was practised in the Constitution, was resolutely opposed to a privilegium. I am not going to say that in the past your Lordships' House has never countenanced privilegia, because of course it has. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an Act of Parliament was the only method
  580
  of procuring a divorce. As everybody who knows his Bible is aware, the law of Moses says,
  "… let him write her a bill of divorcement."
  But that was a definite class of privilegium, well understood and running along general lines, although it had to be passed for a particular instance. The particular Bill proposed to your Lordships this afternoon is not only a privilegium which breaks new ground but it is, I believe, unique among privilegia in that it is introduced by the parties for whose benefit it is to be procured. I do not know; but that is what it seems to me to be.
  There is only one other thing I should like to say upon this matter, and I say it with a great deal of sympathy. I have a great deal of sympathy with the feelings that inspired this Bill—the more so because I was in precisely the same position myself. I wanted to stand for a constituency which I think there is very little doubt that, unless I had behaved very badly, I should have won. But I was told that I could not stand because of my father's age, which deprived me of that opportunity. My remedy, too, might have been to go to my father, but I am sorry to say that I think my father would have told me that I had no grounds for thinking that my presence in another place was so important to the country that special measures should be taken to enable me to enter it. I thought then that it was possible (your Lordships will appreciate that there have been so many in respect of my own country that I am naturally familiar with the process) that a Bill of Attainder, without any escheat, might have served the purpose. But I certainly think my father would have snubbed me very severely. I frankly admit that I was not a Member of another place. I had not the great career and record that inspired the present Bill. But, at the same time, I was in that situation, and I felt it very much at the time. However, I had to "bite the bullet," as P. G. Wodehouse said, and I think that is probably the answer in this particular case.
  4.33 p.m.
  VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, as frequently happens in your Lordships' House when we consider new proposals, we have to take into account not only

  581
  their strict merits, not only the principle that is being raised, but also the procedure that has been adopted and the timeliness of the particular proposal. All these aspects have been dwelt upon in connection with the Bill which is now before your Lordships' House. The noble Viscount who introduced it disclaimed any intention of raising the wider issue of the reform of the Constitution of your Lordships' House, and I shall follow him in that respect, though this question which we are now debating must have some bearing upon the other and wider issue. Indeed, that that was so, I found when I was speaking on the previous occasion.
  In opening the former debate I found it necessary and useful to quote the particular case of Mr. Wedgwood Benn and the previous cases, so strongly pressed, of Lord Curzon, Lord Selborne and Lord Midleton, when they were heirs to Peerages, and the more recent one of Lord Hailsham, as examples of the unreasonableness of the principle of heredity put to its strictest purposes, as in this case, in choosing the Members of a House of Legislature. But I do not propose to proceed upon that line to-day. I think the noble Viscount was right to regard this as a case in itself, and to leave the other matter for consideration, first by the Select Committee of the House, which is about to be appointed, and afterwards by way of any proposals that may be made in either House of Parliament for a general reform.
  When I spoke the other day on this particular case of Mr. Wedgwood Benn I declared in no compromising language that the present situation is, in the first place, an infringement of the rights of personal liberty of individuals; it is a denial of opportunities which are open to other persons. Secondly, it is, in my judgment, a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, because they are deprived of one of their Members, not by the fiat of the electors, not by vote of the House itself, not by any statutory disqualification (as of aliens or felons), not by any statutory law, not by any Act of Parliament, but solely by the customs, traditions and rules laid down by your Lordships' House. Thirdly, in the same way, it is a breach of the rights of the electors, who in all other respects (apart from those statutory disqualifications) have the ancient right of picking out any person of the male sex—I say nothing
  582
  about the other half of the population. Any man can be chosen on his merits to stand for Parliament, and can be elected to represent them.
  But, that having been done, if he is an heir to a Peerage, the moment the present incumbent of that Peerage dies—and it may be his cousin or his great-uncle—this man, duly, and perhaps repeatedly, elected by a particular constituency, ceases to represent it in another place. From the moment when his predecessor draws his last breath, he is no longer a Member of the House of Commons. If he continued to sit or to vote he would be liable to penalties—I think on the information of a common informer. That seems to me to be a quite indefensible principle, and one which cannot possibly be justified. When the noble Lord, Lord Elton, says: "After all, there are millions in the country, why make so much fuss about this one individual, or even if there were a hundred such individuals?", I ask, has it ever been a rule of the British Constitution that you are at liberty to do an injustice if only there are not too many cases; that if it is only one or ten you need not take remedial action? Surely, in a single case, or one in a century, if the principle is right, that principle ought to be observed. For these reasons, it seems to me quite indefensible that the present situation can be left as it is.
  The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, made a most cogent speech. The noble Lord himself is the very incarnation of the hereditary principle; I think he is the twenty-first Baron and his Peerage dates front 1263. And he is an example of the good fruits that come from that principle now and then. When I first came into this House nearly twenty years ago, he was a very active Member, and his polished speeches were always listened to with great attention. I think his speech to-day makes us regret that in recent years he has not attended with such regularity, and that he so rarely intervenes in our debates. I hope that he will come back.
  He said that because he was opposed to a particular clause of the Bill he felt it necessary to vote against the Second Reading. But surely his long experience of Parliamentary procedure should tell him that there is an alternative. If he believes that the Bill in its general purpose is right, but that it is wrong in that

  583
  it contains a clause allowing a Peerage to be suspended but to be called out of abeyance if, in a later generation, a member in the direct line of descent wishes to revive it, he should support the Second Reading and move an Amendment in Committee. That observation applies also to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. If the noble Lord means to go into the Division Lobby—I do not know if he will go; that is a matter of Parliamentary tactics—I can tell him that I should certainly vote for the Second Reading, reserving the right to support Amendments in Committee.
  Some noble Lords are concerned about the Bill because this ancient House, centuries old, has never previously been faced with this situation in this way: it would be creating an entirely new precedent. But ought that to be the final consideration? Supposing that someone had been able to "dig out" such a case in the reign of King George II and show that such a case as this had previously arisen and had been dealt with by a Bill of this sort, everyone would have said, "Here we see the wisdom of our ancestors. They even could foresee a case like this." Everyone would have said that we should adopt the policy of the Statute of Chapter 43 of the fourteenth year of the reign of King George II. But why should not we make precedents? A precedent must begin sometime. We are all familiar with the tritest of quotations from Tennyson in which he says of freedom that it
  "… slowly broadens down
  From precedent to precedent."
  But unless someone first creates a precedent, there will be nothing to broaden. So I think that we might well pass this Bill to-day and provide some ancestral wisdom for the guidance of our posterity. For these reasons, I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
  There are other points that might be made in its support, and, before concluding, I should like to give one or two. With regard to precedents, a Peerage has always been regarded—and rightly so—as so great an honour and so great a privilege that, except in recent times, there has been no occasion of anyone so fortunate as to inherit a Peerage desiring to rid himself of it. The lower a Peer's own personal qualifications, the more he regarded the distinction of being a Peer as of value. Consequently the occasion has
  584
  never arisen in this way. But now, in days of democracy, we have the situation in which a person's whole career and ambition may lie in the House of Commons, so that a Peerage becomes no longer a privilege but an incubus. If that is so, ought he to be left without any remedy whatsoever?
  The same sort of matter was raised in the different sphere of land ownership by the practice and law of entail. In order to maintain the status and wealth of the great land-owning families, there was the strange law of entail, which allowed properties to descend from father to son without any part being played by the owner for life. That law was found to be so burdensome that after a great deal of controversy, and many years of discussion, the Entail Act was passed to allow two generations, if they agreed, to break an entail. But there is no permission to break the entail of a Peerage itself. If it were right to do that with regard to land-owning, is it not also just with regard to the Peerage itself?
  Another point is this. The Monarchy survives in the modern world as an example of the principle of heredity and is universally supported and working extraordinarily well. But it works well because it is not unchangeable: the principle is not absolute and unbreakable. Only recently we had the case of the incumbent of the Crown saying that his situation was intolerable and abdicating the Crown for himself and for his heirs. That has happened before in the long history of this country. But though a King may abdicate, a Peer may not. Are we to carry the principle of heredity to such an extreme that we have arising situations such as that of Anthony Wedgwood Benn? It may be that all this discussion may be superseded if the reform of your Lordships' House comes about, when this aspect might be dealt with as part of the whole question. But, meanwhile, are we to permit this personal injustice to be done to this one individual? Are we to say, "Let it be done, because it concerns only an individual"? I come back to what I said at the beginning: personal liberty is a sacred thing. We have no right to remake a man's life against his will, merely because of a status which, through no fault of his own, he chances to inherit. I support the Bill.
  4.46 p.m.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, like all your Lordships I listened with the greatest care, and I hope sympathy, to the moving and carefully prepared speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, who moved the Second Reading of this Bill. I have also read more than once the statement which his son made to the Committee on Personal Bills, and I should like to say at once that I think that that statement is notable for its erudition, its modesty and its clarity of argument. Today we are faced with one of those difficult questions which face everyone in public affairs more frequently than we desire. On the one hand, we have the wishes of an old friend, if I may so call him, and the old friend of many of your Lordships, and the career of a young man of promise in his own chosen field: on the other hand, we have to consider the position and the status of your Lordships' House and the public advantage, questions which, I humbly and modestly submit, are interdependent. That is not an easy task.
  May I give one example of the difficulty? I disagree respectfully but profoundly with Viscount Samuel's attempt to carry the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, with him on the question of the principle of the Bill; because if there is one point that is perfectly evident it is that there is a deep division in principle between the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, for the creation of a Life Peerage out of an hereditary Peerage, and the proposal in the present Bill which, by the use of the doctrine of abeyance (upon which I am not going to comment) seeks to cut out one generation, with the maintenance of full rights for succeeding generations. It would take more than even the persuasive eloquence of the noble Viscount to create a true synthesis of these points of view.
  I have considered this matter and I believe that a great and serious constitutional issue is involved in this Bill. I believe that the acceptance of the principle that the heir to a Peerage can renounce his eventual right would effect a great constitutional change. I am not going to argue to-day whether your Lordships' House were right in 1678, in the case of the Viscounty of Purbeck, to which the noble Viscount referred, in finally deciding that there should not be a right in a Peer to surrender his Peerage. I say,
  586
  "finally deciding" because the matter had been discussed and the same conclusion arrived at several times before; but that was the last case in which the matter was raised. I am not going into that. I am only going to say that that has been an unchallenged rule of your Lordships' House and of Peerage for nearly 300 years.
  The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, quoted my predecessor, Lord Shaftesbury, in that case. With great respect, I should like to put the same thought—Lord Shaftesbury's thought—as it was stated by my noble and learned friend and predecessor, Lord Simonds, in the course of the proceedings before the Personal Bills Committee. The noble and learned Viscount said:
  "But, on the other hand, what Lord Shaftesbury said—and it seems to me to have a good deal of force—is that the whole nation is interested in whether, not only you, but any other heir to a Peerage can surrender his Peerage."
  Whatever else is clear, the departure from that rule would create a new view of the responsibilities and duties which Peerage implies. I believe that that is an important point (and I shall try to develop it) for this reason. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, has spoken of the individual liberty of the one particular person involved. With the greatest respect, liberty and freedom in our land depend on the functioning of an ordered Constitution accepted throughout the land; and it is within that framework that true liberty alone can lie.
  My point is not that there should be no alterations to the Constitution, but that when you are dealing with a subject of such importance and magnitude, alterations should not be made by working from an individual case, but from viewing the Constitution as a whole and seeing how it can be improved along the lines which discussion and mutual tolerance and forbearance of differences indicate. That is the question for this afternoon: should this be done in relation to a particular case, or is it a matter which requires a more general conspectus? That is the point that I want to put to your Lordships. I want to make it quite clear to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, that it is not my purpose to-day, as it was not that of my noble friend who leads this House, Lord Salisbury, to pronounce on the wider question, that if your Lordships' House

  587
  is reformed in such a way that the number of hereditary Peers sitting and voting is limited, then in that case there should be some power of election in those who inherit Peerages. That is a different question, and I am sure it is one which your Lordships would want to discuss.
  I would remind the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, that Paragraph (8) of the document which he put before your Lordships a short time ago, which resulted from the discussion of the Party Leaders seven years ago, in which he and I both had the honour to take part, reads:
  "Peers who were not Lords of Parliament should be entitled to stand for election to the House of Commons, and also to vote at elections in the same manner as other citizens."
  As I say, I am not disposing of that point. What I am saying is that it is a point which merits the most full and complete discussion, including the questions of the time at which and the method in which the Peer would be allowed to make his election. It is obviously a matter which your Lordships would discuss with great interest and. I believe, considerable concern. Therefore, I want your Lordships to get this quite clear: that that is a matter of general application and general interest.
  The Bill at present before your Lordships, however, is of its essence of particular and not of general application, and I submit to your Lordships that it is not a subject capable of being dealt with on the appeal of the individual without due consideration of the principles involved. Let me put this point, too. I am not going to make decisions on what is partly a moral question for your Lordships, but I am going to say that your Lordships will have to consider whether, if you pass this Bill, you could fairly refuse another Bill of the same kind; and you would also have to consider how far back you were going to go. My noble friend Lord Saltoun put this point of view; there are others that we know and have known all our lives. What are your Lordships going to do with regard to them? A not unreasonable test for your Lordships' House is: where does the committal in honour lead us here? I say that a consideration of that question brings us back to my general point, that this is a matter that can only be dealt with generally and not in regard to particular cases.
  588
  I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I make a slight excursus here, because I think it is important that in this debate we should consider, as I have tried to do as carefully as I can, the arguments which have been advanced in favour of this matter. I have tried to weigh the arguments which Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn advanced. One of them was, as I am sure the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, will remember, that this House has dealt with Peerage matters individually and not as matters of principle. As my argument is directly to the contrary, I would ask your Lordships' indulgence for a moment or two while I deal with that point, because I think it has some interest and relevance to the matter we are considering. Mr. Wedgwood Benn took the examples, first of all, of attainder and reversal of attainder. Bills of Attainder dealt with individual Peers; but attainder was based on the general principle that it was a method of dealing with treason against the Crown of the day. It was from that general method of dealing with treason (I am not going to argue its merits or demerits to-day) that its use in particular cases arose. With regard to reversal of attainder, in some cases the name was cleared; in other cases there was a change of view in the Crown and Government of the country as to what constituted treason. If I may relieve this heavy part of my argument, I would remind your Lordships of the jingle, which illustrates this:
  "Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
  For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
  That was usually the background of the reversal of Acts of Attainder, and again it depended on a general principle.
  Now Mr. Wedgwood Benn also relied on what I may call the German Princes Act—and I think the noble Viscount referred to it—the Deprivation of Titles Act, 1917, which dealt with those Members of your Lordships' House who were adhering to the enemy during the 1914–18 war. Again, there was a perfectly general principle. The general principle was that it was not suitable or convenient that those adhering to the enemies of their country should be Members of your Lordships' House, and that was applied, after proof, in particular cases.
  Take another example which was raised: that of what were called Parliamentary Peerages and are really Bills by

  589
  which special limitations were attached to Peerages by Acts of Parliament, such as the Arundel Peerage Act at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Dukedom of Marlborough Act in 1706. Again there was a general principle. These Peerages were so deeply rooted in the history and traditions of our country that it was necessary that a special limitation should be attached to protect, maintain and secure that part of our history. That is the principle behind that class of case. Again, it was urged that the Rules winch your Lordships laid down in 1927 with regard to calling Peerages out of abeyance had to be applied to an individual case. But it was the converse that your Lordships' House was doing. What your Lordships were laying down were general rules that were to be applicable to calling out of abeyance, which would preserve the propriety and suitability of the calling out. I am sorry to have inflicted that excursus on your Lordships, but I think it is important that we should see that, at any rate according to my view of history, this House has not proceeded on individual cases: it has applied principles which are deeply rooted to individual cases. I think two individual examples were given—one the De La Warr Peerage and the other the Bedford Peerage in 1478. The first, as I understand it, dealt largely with estates and the second was a rearrangement of his thoughts and wishes by Edward IV at the end of the War of the Roses, neither of which I should say really help us on the general point, which is that your Lordships have tried in these matters to act in accordance with principle.
  I turn for one moment to the speech, as forthright as one always expects, of my noble friend, Lord Winterton. The noble Earl was putting a rather different point of view. He asked the question, as I understood it, "Why in modern times should any Peer be deprived of the right of sitting in the House of Commons?" I always listen—I have at any rate for thirty-five years—with great attention and sympathy to anything Lord Winterton says, but he asked me for an answer and I shall try to give it to him. The answer that I make is that we have sometimes, with great clash and political turmoil, and at other times by quiet exercise of common sense and tolerance, worked out a Constitution, and the bicameral system is an important part of it. A bicameral
  590
  system depends on securing the membership of your Second Chamber. I say that you are not going to protect your Second Chamber, which I think is essential for matters of revision and good legislation, unless you deal generally and seriously with changes in the composition of that Chamber, and do not, because of the warmth of heart and sympathy which we all know the noble Earl possesses to the brim, attack that Constitution in order to obviate a difficulty in a particular case.
  EARL WINTERTON: I am sorry to interrupt the Lord Chancellor. I did not attack the Constitution to any greater extent than he attacked it when he and others agreed, in the conference between the Parties, that there should be an alteration in the composition of the House. The Constitution of your Lordships' House is, if I may say so, under consideration, if not attack, from many quarters.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am not arguing that point with the noble Earl. That is not where we depart. What I am saying is that if you have a Constitution you may want to alter it. I personally believe—I have never made any secret of it—that there should be an alteration in the composition of your Lordships' House. What I am saying to the noble Earl is that when you have a certain constitutional situation, even if you do not like it, you must not alter it by granting a privilege to an individual; you must alter it by facing up to what requires alteration and amendment and then doing it.
  There is one further point. Politics is the most fascinating and, at the same time, the most cruel of all the occupations to which humanity devotes itself. The first lesson that we all learn is that each one of us has no claim to indispensability, in whatever office he may be holding. I have seen the excellence of Mr. Wedgwood Benn's performance in another place, and I speak with complete sincerity about that. But one must recognise that that position cannot be differentiated from that of any other heir to a Peerage who has occupied, or wishes to occupy, a seat in the House of Commons and has, like Mr. Wedgwood Benn, the great honour and privilege of generations of ancestors who have served with distinction in the House of Commons. That is what we have to face; and while we

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  sympathise with the position of any young man who has given service in the House of Commons, we believe that the remedy must be a remedy which is general in character. It must, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, be arrived at not by a side wind but by full, frank and free consideration of all its implications. It is for that reason that I cannot advise your Lordships to do anything other than reject this Bill.
  5.11 p.m.
  VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, first of all I should like to thank the noble Lords who have spoken, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, whose valuable and enlightened examination of this Bill will bear fruit. What is the issue? It is a perfectly simple issue. I have never heard a speech which filled me with as much despair as did the speech of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor. The simple issue is this. All he has to say is: "My Lords, this is a general question for discussion in a general way with the reform of your Lordships' House."
  In 1911 I was a Whip in another place. I counted the joyous Members of Parliament who trooped through the Lobby in support of the Bill which implied that the reform of your Lordships' House would "brook no delay." This young man, according to any reasonable forecast, has to wait another forty-four years before
  we get from the Front Bench another Delphic utterance drafted by the Chief Whip's Office. The issue is quite simple. It is the case of a young man who wants to serve and whose constituency want him to serve. The Lord Chancellor says that that cannot be dealt with as an individual case. That is what the Committee say. Provision is made in the Bill for other people in the same position. But there are not any—that is the whole point. Nobody has come forward to suggest that he would associate himself with this act of renunciation. Therefore, I say that we have met the point of the general argument. It is in the Bill. If it needs amendment, I am sure that the Lord Chancellor will help.
  In one word I should like to say how grateful the Petitioner and myself, as his father, are for the generous, expert help of the Officers of this House in drafting this Bill. At present, as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, said, there is an injustice. The Bill does allow for general application, if there is another case to be found. Because it is a right and fair claim, and is supported by powerful opinion, both here and in another place, I propose to carry the banner into the Lobby.
  On Question, Whether the Bill be now read a second time?
  Their Lordships divided:—
  Contents, 24; Not-Contents, 52.

  CONTENTS

  Jowitt, E.

  Ripon, L. Bp.

  Merthyr, L.

  Listowel, E.

  Morrison, L.

  Lucan, E.[Teller.]

  Adrian, L.

  Pakenham, L.

  Winterton, E.

  Burden, L.

  Pethick-Lawrence, L.

  Haden-Guest, L.

  Shepherd, L.

  Alexander of Hillsborough, V.

  Henderson, L.

  Silkin, L.

  Hall, V.

  Hungarton, L.

  Strabolgi, L. [Teller.]

  Samuel, V.

  Kenswood, L.

  Wise, L.

  Stansgate, V.

  Lawson, L.

  NOT-CONTENTS

  Kilmuir, V. (L. Chancellor.)

  Bledisloe, V.

  Elton, L.

  Hudson, V.

  Fairfax of Cameron, L.

  Cholmondeley, M.

  Monsell, V.

  Fraser of North Cape, L.

  Reading, M.

  Ruffside, V.

  Gifford, L.

  Simonds, V.

  Grantchester, L.

  Beauchamp, E.

  Soulbury, V.

  Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

  Bessborough, E.

  Woolton, V.

  Hastings, L.

  Buckinghamshire, E.

  Hawke, L.

  Clarendon, E.

  Brassey of Apethorpe, L.

  Hindlip, L.

  Fortescue, E. [Teller.]

  Brocket, L.

  Hurcomb, L.

  Gosford, E.

  Carrington, L.

  Jessel, L.

  Home, E.

  Coleraine, L.

  Lloyd, L.

  Munster, E.

  Croft, L.

  Mancroft, L.

  Onslow, E. [Teller.]

  De L'Isle and Dudley, L.

  May, L.

  O'Hagan, L.

  Rockley, L.

  Sinha, L.

  Rathcavan, L.

  Saltoun, L.

  Strang, L.

  Rea, L.

  Sandhurst, L.

  Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

  Ritchie of Dundee, L.

  Sandys, L.

  Teviot, L.

  Teynham, L.

  Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.

  CLYDE NAVIGATION (SUPER ANNUATION) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.
  GLASGOW CORPORATION (EXTENSION OF TIME) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.
  CHESHUNT URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL
    NUNEATON CORPORATION BILL
    Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
  GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS
  GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS