asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has received applications from conscientious objectors qualified for exceptional employment to be allowed to undertake educational work; if so, from how many persons; and what number have been, or will be, allowed to undertake such work?

A certain number of the men employed under the Committee on the Employment of Conscientious Objectors who have been qualified for exceptional employment have applied to be authorised to take up educational work. No such application has been or will be granted, and no record has been kept of the number of such applications.

Has the opinion of the Board of Education, or of the President of the Board of Education, been taken on this matter; if so, what is that opinion?

No, Sir; the Committee have acted according to their own discretion.

Has the Home Office received any representation on this matter from the Board of Education, even if it-has not been consulted?

I could not say.

Before any concession of this sort is made, will the parents of scholars attending any school where it is proposed that these people shall be engaged be consulted?

The Committee have decided as a policy and a principle that educational work is not suitable work for conscientious objectors to be released to go to.

I would ask the hon. Member to proceed with the next question [No. 19].

asked the Home Secretary if he will have an inquiry made into the condition of J. Sumner, No. 456, Northallerton Prison, who is serving his fourth sentence of two years' hard labour; and whether, in view of the state of his health, the imprisonment he has already endured, and the treatment meted out to him by the military service tribunals, he will order the man's discharge?

I find on inquiry that this prisoner is in good health mentally and physically, and that there is no ground on which the Home Secretary could advise interference with his sentence.