Mr. E. HARVEYasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the case of a child ten years of age, whose father is serving in the Army abroad and whose mother is engaged on munition work, who has been sent by the magistrate to a certified institution for a period of six years, although the boy had a good character at home and at school up to recent times; whether, in this and other similar cases where the absence of proper parental control is due directly to war conditions, he will advise the magistrates to reduce the period of commitment to reformatories and industrial schools to the period of the War; and whether he will issue a general recommendation on these lines to magistrates?
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§ Sir G. CAVEI will have inquiry made into the case referred to. Orders of committal must be for a definite period; but when a father returns home from the Army it will be open to him to apply for the release of any child who may have been sent to a school during his absence, and if the home is a good one and it does not appear necessary in the boy's interests to detain him further, the application will receive favourable consideration.