The object of the Amendment I rise to move is to reduce the limits of this Bill. There is a very strong feeling on the part of some Members that this measure has been brought forward under very unusual conditions. In the first place it has been read a second time without the House having any information upon the points which are embraced or the policy proposed to be pursued; in the second place the Bill has been hurried through the House in the most unprecedented manner; and, lastly, the amount is a very large one to be voted away without any information at this time of the session. It cannot be urged in respect of any of the items, except two, that there is any special reason for proceeding with them now rather than six months hence. The difficulties which the Bill is intended to remove have existed for years, and the policy proposed cannot be carried out in six months, and therefore most of the items can very well wait in order that Parliament may give fuller consideration to them than is possible in the last week of the session. Another ground for limiting the Bill to the two cases which I propose is that those cases, being cases of emergency, do not commit us to the principle to which the acceptance of the Bill as a whole undoubtedly would commit the House. That principle has never yet been discussed, and for those reasons I press the Amendment upon the consideration of the Committee.

I rise for the purpose of making a suggestion to the Government which they may be able to accept. The Secretary of State for the Colonies has just put into our hands a few copies—in fact, they are only proofs—of a Paper containing an explanatory statement of the proposed loans and of the circumstances under which they are sought by the different colonies. Nobody has had time to study this information. I recognise fully that it is meeting our desires to give us the information we require. Our principal complaint has not been that the Bill was necessarily a bad Bill and that these were improper loans, but that the House of Commons was expected to give its assent to these proposals without any information at all. Here is information supplied by Her Majesty's Government, but we have not had time to look at it or digest it. I would suggest that it might possibly lead to a saving of time if progress were reported and the Committee stage resumed to-morrow. I would suggest that my hon. friends should not take advantage of the additional time to manufacture new Amendments or anything of that sort, while probably a good many of these Amendments of which they have given notice would disappear because of the information which has been received. In the meantime the Government might proceed with the Board of Education Bill. In that way no time would be lost, the proper forms would be observed, and an unpleasant disputation avoided.

I think the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman has a good deal of force behind it, and I entirely appreciate the spirit in which it is made. I admit that the Opposition have an apparent ground of complaint in the fact that the information which the Government has been anxious to supply has been so long delayed. I did not think that the Second Reading of the Bill was a convenient time to give the information; in fact, I was not then aware of the exact nature of the information desired. I thought it probably would be most convenient that it should be given when we came to discuss the schedule. I am informed that a full supply of the Papers will be in the House at eight o'clock, and I am inclined to agree with the right hon. Gentleman that, pending that full delivery, it might be advantageous that the Debate should be adjourned. I will only make one further observation. The hon. Member for Forfar has said there is no urgency about these loans. That is an entire misstatement. The position is a very peculiar one, and one not likely to recur. For two years past the introduction of this now system has been in contemplation, and the country has had notice of the intention to introduce the new system, of which the Colonial Loans Bill is the first step. When a loan is applied for by a Colonial legislature, and sanctioned by the Secretary of State, the Crown agents put the loan on the market. It was introduced as a Treasury Bill and not as a Colonial Bill, and when that was decided the Crown agents ceased to place this loan upon the market. Now they find themselves liable to a demand of £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 sterling, and if those loans were called in a great inconvenience to the public service in the Colonies would be caused. It becomes, therefore, absolutely necessary, whatever may be thought of the principle upon which the Colonial Loans Bill was originally founded, that we must have the money, a large portion of which has been already spent and another large portion of which we have already entered into obligations to pay. When that is done, and this Bill is passed, the Government do not consider that the House will be committed to the principle, and the whole matter will be considered by the Government in the future, and we shall have to determine whether or not it is advisable to abandon this proposal or introduce it again next session, at a period when full time can be given for its discussion. Hon. Members may rest assured that we shall not consider any concession which they may make now by passing this Bill as more than a reasonable arrangement to deal with a particular emergency, and we shall not consider that they are in any way pledged to the principle of the Colonial Loans Bill.

Perhaps I may be allowed to explain my position upon this question. I am very glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that the principle of this Bill is not to be considered as a precedent, and that he sees no early prospect of a large loan of this kind being required. But what I wish to say more particularly is that there are two aspects in which we look at this measure. First of all there are its individual merits, and in the second place there is the fact that it is being hurried through the House. Of course the latter objection arose through lack of information, and it ceases to operate with the information that has now been supplied. But I must not be understood as promising that there will be no criticism upon individual loans and in individual cases. Of that I have no knowledge, and I do not intend making any criticism upon that point. All that this agreement disposes of is what I consider the serious argument against the proceedings of the Government—namely, the circumstances in which the House of Commons is called upon to vote this money.

I quite agree with the further explanation of the right hon. Gentleman. I am quite prepared to submit to any criticism upon any particular loan, and I am willing to give any further information which hon. Gentlemen opposite may desire to have. The only point I want to make clear is that the whole of these loans would, in the ordinary way, but for the fact of their introduction by the Treasury, have been settled without coming to this House at all in the usual course, and would have been put upon the market, but they have all been damnified by the delay caused by the introduction of the Bill. If we can get over that difficulty there will be no emergency with regard to any future loan, and the whole policy will be open to reconsideration by the House. I beg to move that we now report progress.

I do not intend to trouble the House at any length upon the present question, because I fully recognise the desire of the House to pass this Bill, and I am not going to use any undue efforts to resist its passage through the House. As a matter of fact the Bill has had a very remarkable history, and the most objectionable point about it has been the very little information the Government have been able to deliver. The Bill very properly went to a Grand Committee, and it is just one of those Bills that should go to a Grand Committee. But when it got there the proceedings had to be abruptly shortened to get through the necessary work of that Committee. Perhaps, for Parliamentary reasons, the Government did not think it was a very good plan to tell the Committee what were their intentions. I am going to ask the Vice-President of the Council one or two questions which I hope he will answer, as it might perhaps enable us to shorten the discussion further on. As the House is aware, the Bill proposes to transfer or give power to transfer by an Order in Council, the authority and jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners to the Board of Education. What I am very anxious to find out from the Government is how far they propose, under the new state of things, if the powers are transferred, to reproduce, in any form, the protection which the law gives to these endowments. In the first place the practice is that a local inquiry may be held, and is very often held. Do the Government intend that these local inquiries shall be held in the future?

Yes.

Do they intend that those inquiries shall be carried out by persons independently of the responsible Minister? There are certain periods which are allowed to persons to make objections when a scheme is proposed to be made. Very often the persons interested are not able to move very quickly, and a certain amount of negotiations have to take place. I want to know whether the Government intend to allow the usual period which is necessary at the present moment before the scheme can be finally enacted by the Order in Council. I should like to know whether the Government propose to allow the same period of five months to elapse. I also desire some information as to how the Government propose to deal with the judicial work of the Board of Education, because the House will observe that henceforward the Board of Education will have very extensive judicial powers. They will be called upon to decide an enormous number of very difficult and intricate points of law. Are those points of law going to be decided by the ordinary officials of the Education Department, or is there going to be a legal side to the Education Department, as it were, with a particular commissioner, whose business it will be to know the law and have a judicial mind, and be able to give a decision according to the precedents which govern these cases, and according to the accepted principles of the Court of Chancery and the Charity Commission? Leaving Section 2, I want to ask one or two questions about Clause 4. Could the Government now tell us what sort of subjects they propose to refer to the Consultative Committee for their advice? Do they propose to refer the powers now wielded by the Charity Commission to the Consultative Committee? I think it would be possible under the Bill to do so. I apologise to the House for raising all these details, but the Bill contains nothing to guide us, and the Government have given us no information up to now. Under the Bill I think it is possible under Clause 4 for the Government to refer any matter to the Consultative Committee for advice, so that it will be possible to replace the Charity Commission by the Consultative Committee. Then there is another point—is the advice of this Consultative Committee to be public or private advice? I can quite conceive that private advice might be a very valuable thing on many subjects; but if the advice be public and we have a Minister at the head of the Department, he might be able to shelter his own responsibility behind the advice of the Consultative Committee. Technically he would always be responsible to this House for the decisions given by the Department. We all know that these technicalities have very little value, but the Minister might shelter himself by saying, "My Consultative Committee have decided, and they advise that such a course should be taken, and I can hardly take it upon myself to ignore their advice." In a case of that kind no hon. Member of this House will deny that the power of this House will be very seriously diminished, for hon. Members must remember that the Consultative Committee will not be responsible to this House. I do not know whether the salaries of this Committee will be voted by this House or not.

There are no salaries.

Then there are no salaries, and therefore there will be no control, except the control which will be exercised by the Minister. I think this is a matter which the House ought to be advised upon. I should like to ask one other question, and it is this—How long do the Government contemplate it will take before the organisation under the Bill is likely to be complete? It is very important for us to know whether this proposal will be carried out before the next General Election or not. Perhaps it is rather uncivil to speak in the presence of the Government of the possibility of their political death, and I do not anticipate it.. But, of course, it is possible, and under those circumstances it might happen that all the more delicate and difficult matters which have to be decided by the transfer of these powers would not be decided by the Duke of Devonshire, and by my right hon. friend the Vice-President of the Council, in whom we have the greatest confidence, and these matters may be decided by hon. Members who do not hold the same views as we do on this side of the House. There are such difficult questions which might arise as the administration of the Endowed Schools Act, which might have to be carried out by another Government. I again apologise to the House for detaining it so long, but I would just like to say another word by way of warning. I want the Committee to realise the magnitude of the interests which are involved. This includes not a small number of Acts of Parliament, but it is a complete Code in itself. During the year 1898 the number of charities dealt with under the Endowed Schools Act shows how much is still going on in the way of reorganising our charities. These charities alone, all of which were dealt with in one year, involve an income of at least £700,000 a year. I think that shows the enormous importance of the interest with which we are dealing under the Endowed Schools Act. Besides these charities there are the charities dealt with under the Charitable Trusts Act, under which 219 charities were dealt with in London by the Charity Commissioners. All these charities are to be henceforward subject to what cannot be essentially a judicial mind, and a body which will not be able to look at the thing from a purely impartial point of view. I just quote these instances to show how important it is that we should have a little more information than has yet been given us, especially upon those points to which I have alluded.

I will reply as clearly and as shortly as I can to the questions put by the noble Lord. My noble friend must remember that this is not a Bill to create new powers. It is merely a measure to transfer from the Charity Commissioners the powers which they hold, and which they exercise, to a new body which will exercise those powers with exactly the same safeguards. Therefore, not only will the Board of Education observe all the restrictions which have been hitherto imposed upon the Charity Commissioners, but they are obliged by law to do this. The noble Lord asks about local inquiries. I may say that the Board of Education must hold local inquiries in the same manner and subject to precisely the same restrictions and safeguards as to the preservation of charities as the Charity Com- missioners do at present. I suppose that in time to come the inquiries will be held by inspectors under the Education Department. Whether this would meet the noble Lord's idea of what is an independent inquiry I am not able to say. Certainly any inquiries I have to provide will be as independent as possible. With reference to the period of objection, it will be exactly the same as at the present time, the only difference being that if this Bill becomes law the person objecting will make his objection not to the Charity Commissioners but to the Board of Education. The noble Lord said something about judicial work. Every Minister has to exercise some kind of judicial choice. At the present moment under the Education Act, the Technical Instruction Acts, and other Acts of Parliament, a great number of judicial determinations are made by the Education Department, and those quasi-judicial decisions are, I am sure, made with the greatest possible care and with the most anxious desire to arrive at true and correct decisions. There is a judicial side to the Education Department, and we have a trained lawyer to whom questions which have a legal bearing are invariably referred. There is no decision ever taken on any legal question without consultation with the proper legal adviser. With regard to the Consultative Committee, that is to be a body which is not in any way to relieve the Minister of Education from his responsibility to this House for everything which is done by the Department. The Consultative Committee will deal with technical questions, such as the framing of regulations which will govern the registration of teachers. In making use of the inspection of any body other than the Universities, the Minister is directed to consult the Committee as to the body whose inspection it is intended to make use of. With regard to what is called technology, the Minister would avail himself of the inspection of the admirable City and Guilds Institute. Before doing so, however, he would consult the Board, and ask them to consider whether the City and Guilds Institute is such a body, and the examinations they conduct are of such a character, as should be properly taken into consideration officially by the Department. Then again, such a question as proposed changes in the curriculum of elementary schools, which is now settled generally by a com- mittee of quasi-experts in the Department itself, may be taken into consideration, as well as the curriculum of schools in the rural districts, which departs in some manner from the curriculum prevailing in the towns.

was understood to ask whether the Consultative Committee would advise as to certain forms of religious teaching, as, for instance, that in the School Board Schools in Liverpool.

I am speaking purely my own opinion, but I would rather be inclined in such a case to consult my hon. and learned friends the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, for that is a question of law and of the construction of the Statute. The next question was as to whether the advice given by the Consultative Committee would be published. I should say, in ordinary cases, certainly not. There may be eases in which it. might be desirable to publish advice, as, for instance, in the case of the registration of teachers, or a new curriculum drawn up for a particular class of schools. But, as a general rule, the advice given by the Consultative Committee to the Minister would not be published. There is a well-known precedent in the public service. Scarcely a single tiling is ever done by the Secretary of State for India with regard to Indian administration without first passing through the Indian Council. Papers are laid before the Committees of the Indian Council before being submitted to the Secretary of State for his decision, but the advice of those Committees is no more published than the advice of the officials in other Departments. Whatever the Committees may have advised it does not in the least relieve the Minister of any responsibility. It is he who is responsible to his colleagues in the Government and to Parliament, and in no case is that responsibility shared by the committee of experts to whom he may have had recourse. The noble Lord asked how long it would be before these changes were completed. That is an extremely difficult question to answer. And he asked about the General Election. I do not know how far off' we are from a General Election. I believe this Parliament may last for a; couple of years longer. Whether it may last for two or three years is a question which a person in my position cannot possibly answer. All I can. say is that due diligence will be exercised in carrying out the powers: given to the Board of Education by this Bill. The power given is that of transferring such of the educational functions of the Charity Commissioners as may be convenient to the new Board of Education, but that power is not exhausted, until every educational function of the Charity Commission is transferred. I think it would be extremely unwise to transfer the whole en bloc.The intention of the Government is to deal with the matters tentatively; they will transfer those powers first of all which are most necessary to carry on the work of the Board of Education, and transfer other powers as they may become necessary, and as experience may show to be useful. I hope the House will not press me further than this. I should think that some powers will never be transferred at all. But how far and how rapidly the powers are to be transferred it is impossible to say. The only object now is to transfer to the Board such powers as are necessary to enable it to act as the central authority for the schools in the country, and this transfer will be effected gradually and as experience shows will be best.

I think the curious Debate to which we are listening, is a rather disagreeable commentary on the new fashion of legislation by way of skeleton. The noble Lord, who in these matters is a hungry politician, comes here in search of flesh, but fails to find it on the bones of this skeleton. He interrogates the right hon. Gentleman who is in command of the Department as to what he means to do with this Bill when he has got it; but not a single word which, the right hon. Gentleman said in reply to the noble Lord either binds him or his successor as to how the law will be administered. The right hon. Gentleman takes a certain view as to what the Consultative Committee may do, and as to how the Endowed Schools Act and the Charity Acts—which are most complicated measures—are to be worked, clause by clause, by the new Department, regardless of the fact that the mere transference of the powers throws those Acts out of gear, and makes it exceedingly difficult to say how they are to be worked under the general terms of this Bill. The long and the short of the matter is that this Bill gives no information whatever. It simply creates a new Department and hands over to it, without explanation, existing powers now worked by an entirely different, body and machinery. The Government, in fact, says: "Pass this Bill in outline, and leave it to the Department to fill up all the details." Of course we all know that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government has patented this new mode of Parliamentary legislation in order to avoid Parliamentary discussion. He drafts a skeleton measure and asks the House of Commons to pass it as a vote of confidence in him, and leaves it to the Department to work it out as best they like. We have seen it in the case of the Light Railways Act. I can only say, without entering into any points of controversy between educationalists on both sides of the House, that this Bill, so far from settling questions of importance, will fling open the door to a great deal of angry controversy as to what is the meaning of such legislation, and what is to be the power in future of the Department to be constituted. It is a new thing that in order to ascertain what this Bill means the noble Lord has to interrogate, not the Legislature, but the man who will hereafter exercise the powers under it. I think that, on the whole, the old-fashioned way of saying in an Act of Parliament what is meant is certainly the better method of legislation.

I think what has been said by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Fife is ample justification for what was said by my noble friend. And for this reason. The right hon. Gentleman says that this is a mere transference of old powers to the new Board of Education, and that all the safeguards exercised heretofore by the Charity Commissioners will be exercised by the Board of Education. But what fills us with apprehension is that you are entirely altering the body which is responsible for this work. You are putting in place of a body which is quasi-judicial in its character and entirely independent of Parliament, a new body which is in no sense judicial, and entirely dependent on a Party vote. That is a serious matter, and I think it is only natural that when the matter is brought forward we should ask for more information as to what the functions are which this new body are to carry out. I had the honour myself of serving five years ago on a Select Committee of this House which inquired into the administration of the Charity Commissioners, especially in regard to the transference of these powers; and we had most important evidence laid before us that the Charity Commission was a judicial body transacting work with an inherited jurisdiction from the Court of Chancery, and obliged to construe Acts of Parliament and deeds in a purely judicial way. The strength of the Board was that it was not amenable to Parliamentary pressure, and was altogether independent of this House. Now, you are putting in its place a body which will be dependent on a Party Vote any day during the session. There is, therefore, some ground for our apprehension that, in consequence of the pressure that will be brought to bear in Parliament, the character of the administration may be altered, and charities intended for other purposes may be utilised for educational schemes. I do not wish to interfere with the progress of the Bill, but I join my hon. friend in protesting against the exceedingly indefinite and vague manner in which this Bill has been brought forward, and I express the hope that on the Report stage the right hon. Gentleman will accept Amendments which will safeguard the judicial work now carried on by the Charity Commission.

The objections which have been taken by hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial side appear to me to be objections that ought to have been taken on the Second Reading. It is too late to raise them now, and to attempt to remedy the defects complained of. It was pointed out when this Bill was debated on the Second Reading that it was practically only a skeleton Bill, and that the whole thing would have to be filled up; that it approached very difficult questions, on which there was a great deal of controversy, but that it passed them by, and did not attempt to grapple with these difficulties. But the House was desirous to have some Bill, and feeling that the session was advanced, and that there was not much chance of getting anything better, the Bill was given a Second Reading. Accordingly it has gone through the various stages, and received discussion in the Grand Committee, and it is now too late to remedy the defects complained of. We cannot clothe the skeleton with flesh and skin at the present moment; and when the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President is questioned it is quite impossible for him to give any more definite answer than he has given to the questions put to him. It is quite clear that the Department cannot yet have had time to face all the difficulties which the transfer involves, and even months must elapse before the right hon. Gentleman can say what precise action he can take on these questions. I am glad to find that the Charity Commission has at last begun to gain the confidence of hon. Gentlemen opposite. We have been accustomed to see schemes which the Charity Commissioners have prepared with great care, and produced exactly on the lines which the law laid down, overthrown with very little consideration or regard for the provisions of the law by motions made in this House. But now at last the Charity Commission is receiving its due meed of praise for the impartial and judicial spirit in which it has approached and discharged its duties. I do not think that the new Department to which its duties are transferred will depart from that spirit, because the questions with which it has to deal are mainly questions which would have to be determined with the advice of the law officers; and I do not think there is any reason to suppose that in the discharge of quasi-judicial functions the Education Department would allow itself to be influenced by improper motives any more than the Charity Commission, or than the Board of Trade or the Local Government Board. After all, these religious difficulties happily form a very small part of the administrative questions which the Department will have to deal with.

I should like to associate myself with what has been said by the hon. and learned Member for West Fife. First of all, however, let me say that many of us who voted for the Second Reading of the Bill did so in the hope that when it came back from the Grand Committee the skeleton would be clothed to a certain extent. But the Bill has come back as naked as when it went upstairs. The Bill, as it stands, is not legislation in the true sense at all. Not a single individual in the House can tell what he is legislating about. I appeal to any Member on either side of the House whether he knows how secondary education is going to be organised in future. The fact is that the House is asked to give a blank cheque to the Education Department, which after all must have a political complexion—there is no harm in saying that either of the Education Department or of the Board of Trade—and when you get a new Ministry it is very likely that you may get an entire change of policy. I go further, and say that you ought to have an entire change of policy. And when you have an organisation of that kind, and when the whole fabric has to be rebuilt, you cannot escape unfortunate political discussions in regard to the methods of secondary education, just as we unfortunately have them in regard to elementary education. In fact, you are introducing into secondary education, which is now almost free from the religious difficulty, and ought to be so free, those very difficulties we have in regard to elementary education. We are certain to discuss what the new President of the Board of Education does. Is it not certain that there would be great differences of opinion as to whether endowments should be used one way or another; and what guarantee is there, after all, in regard to the opinion of the law officers of the Crown? I have the greatest respect for the opinion of the Solicitor-General, and yet we do not desire to put ourselves, bound hand and foot as regards questions of this kind, in the hands of any Department. What are the two points referred to by the hon. and learned Member opposite? Take the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President. Do we know what powers are to be transferred from the Charity Commissioners to the Board of Education? Of course not. It is a matter on which the House ought to make up its mind and ought to legislate; but nobody knows what is intended to be done, and we have not made up our minds as to what is to be done. We simply give a blank cheque to the Education Department, and there will be, hereafter, endless political discussions. Instead of formulating a mere skeleton of this kind—a mere paper scheme—we might have clothed it with a proper body. A great deal undoubtedly in the Bill depends upon the Consultative Committee, but no one knows whether there is to be a Consultative Committee or not, or how it is to be organised—and these points are the very essence of the matter. There is no obligation under this Bill to appoint it at all; there is only power to appoint. And if appointed, no one knows how it is to do its duty. You might have a Consultative Committee which would be of the greatest advantage as regards secondary education; and you might have a Consultative Committee which would do nothing but harm, according to my view, to secondary education. There is a further more extraordinary element as regards this Consultative Committee. Suppose a certain number of gentlemen are appointed on it, does anyone know what the Consultative Committee would do? Is it to be a mere name, a sham, or is it to be a reality? What are its true functions to be? I agree that it is, unfortunately, too late at this stage to attempt to clothe the skeleton in flesh and blood. I believe that this new patent method of legislation ought to be discouraged in every way. I say emphatically we are not doing our duty, and nothing will be worse if we proceed on this principle in the future—namely of giving up our own responsibility and merely throwing a skeleton Bill at the head of a Department, leaving it to be worked out on political lines, according as the head of the Department is chosen from one side of the House or the other. The organisation of secondary education is one of the most important matters in our time, and it should be dealt with fairly and fully by this House.

I do not know whether my right hon. friend will make any concession to the suggestions which have been made, or whether he will give us an assurance that this Bill is to be followed up by another Bill. We are rapidly approach- ing the close of the present Parliament, and it is an exceedingly awkward arrangement if this skeleton Bill, which has been so roughly handled this evening, is not to be completed during the present Parliament by that further measure which will give it life. We have got very little information about this Bill. My right hon. friend the Vice-President of the Council made a very remarkable suggestion when he said that in certain cases the advice of the Consultative Committee would be submitted to Parliament, and in other cases not; that sometimes the Minister of Education would keep the advice he receives to himself, and at other times it would be made known to the public. I would like to know how. By those communications to the Press which are sometimes conveniently made, or by official documents laid before the House? The whole of this discussion leaves in my mind an uncomfortable feeling, and I join with my hon. friends on both sides of the House in regretting the manner in which this Bill has been brought forward. I do not, however, desire to put any impediment in the way of the passage of the Bill, and would only ask the Government to carefully consider the Amendments which are to be put before them.

The House seems to have rather a false impression of what this Bill does. The Debate up to the present has consisted almost entirely of complaints and anticipations from one narrow point of view, and has led the House to believe that the Bill deals with secondary education only. The Bill unites in one administration the present authorities, and enables the Charity Commission to decide whether a certain charity is an educational trust or not. It also takes power to inspect secondary schools where the governors of those schools desire to be inspected. Really the Bill has very little to do with secondary education. As to robbing the Charity Commissioners of their powers, I heard the Secretary before the Secondary Education Commission say that all the powers of the Endowed Schools Commission might well be handed over to the Board of Education, and I heard Lord Justice Davey express almost the same idea. The apprehensions which have been expressed are unfounded. The Bill is an important one, dealing with a wide subject, touching more than one point. It is an essential Bill if the central administration of education is to be improved, and for my part I heartily hope it will be passed.

I move this Amendment for the purpose of securing that the Minister for Education under this Bill should be a Member of the House of Commons. There are obvious reasons for that proposal. It is the House of Commons which provides the money and discusses the Estimates, which sits more frequently and for longer hours than the House of Lords, and exercises the greater part of the control over education. It is therefore important that the Minister for Education should be a Member of the House of Commons. But under this Bill we are not to have necessarily a person of the status even of the Vice-president in this House. The head of the Education Department is the Lord President of the Council, and he receives £2,000 per annum for his Lord Presidency, but receives no salary as the head of the Education Department. This Bill as drawn would perpetuate and crystallise that system, and make it impossible to depart in future from the existing arrangement. The Lord President of the Council has only twice during the last thirty years been a Member of the House of Commons. On one occasion it was Lord John Russell, and on another occasion the Lord President, ten days after his appointment, was translated to the Upper House. It is clear, to my mind, that unless something is done either by an addition to the terms of the Act or by a definite undertaking on the part of those who will have to make this appointment, we shall run a serious risk of having the first President of the Board in the House of Lords, and thenceforward he will always be a Member of that House. I therefore move this Amendment.

I hope the hon. Member will not press this Amendment. It is quite impossible that we should give any assurance as to who should be the first head of the Board of Education. That is a matter which lies with Her Majesty's advisers, and it would be quite a departure from constitutional practice for any instruction of this kind to be inserted in the Bill.

While I entirely agree with the hon. Member's views in desiring that the Education Minister should sit in this House, I feel there is a great deal of force in the objection urged by the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope the Amendment will not be pressed.

In supporting the Amendment, I would remind the Government that when the Board of Agriculture was instituted there was a distinct and definite assurance given that the President should have a seat in the House of Commons. It seems: to me, having regard to the much wider and enormously more important interests covered by the Education Bill now before the House, my hon. friend is absolutely justified in insisting that on the constitution of this authority there should be some guarantee given that the responsible Minister who will have to deal with this question should be a Member of the House of Commons. I hope the Amendment will be pressed to a Division as a matter of principle. Having regard to the enormously responsible duty to be discharged, it seems to me the head of the department should be in this House, and capable of being questioned as to the policy of the department.

I am in fullest sympathy with the object the hon. Member has in view, but I venture to hope he will not press the Amendment to a Division, because the result will not represent the true feelings of the House. There would be a large number who would not be able to vote for the Amendment, on the ground that it is contrary to the usual constitutional practice to insert in a statute a provision which would limit the discretion of those who in future will advise her Majesty in appointing a Minister of State. At the same time, I regret that there should be a suggestion in the clause that in future the chief of this great department will sit in the House of Peers, and not in the House of Commons. This department must become one of the great spending departments of the State. Of necessity the amount of money which Parliament will have to vote in connection with education will year by year increase, and I do not think the House of Commons will be content to see the Board of Education represented in this House as the Post Office at present is, with the actual and responsible Minister in the House of Lords. But, although holding these views, for the reason I have given I do not think it would be wise to go to a Division.

I feel as strongly as anyone the desirability of having the Minister in charge of this most important department in the House of Commons. We are spending about £8,000,000 a year on education, but the system, as every expert knows, is of a deplorably inefficient character, and the only way in which we can get it reformed and made worthy of the country will be by subjecting the department to the constant criticism of the House of Commons. For the reasons which have already been given, however, I hope we shall not divide upon the Amendment. If such a Division took place many Members would abstain, and we should go into the lobby with an extremely small minority, the result of which would be that next year, if we complained that the Minister of Education was in the House of Lords, we should be told that the proposal that he should be a Member of this House was rejected by an enormous majority.

Whether we divide or not, I wish to give my support to the principle involved in this Amendment. We have an illustration of the inconvenience resulting from the head of a department being in the House of Lords in the case of the Post Office. Unless the principle of the Amendment is adopted we shall be in a similar position of inconvenience with regard to the Board of Education. Ministers who have to deal with questions in which the great masses of the people are deeply interested should have seats in this House, so as to sit face to face with the real representatives of the people—which the Peers are not.

As my object was to ventilate this question, I do not propose to take a Division, and by the leave of the House I will withdraw the Amendment.

I desire to move the Amendment on the Paper on behalf of the hon. Member for Hertford. I understand he intended to move it, not in any great expectation that the Government would add the words to the Bill, but in the hope of getting some assurance about a matter concerning which we were in doubt with regard to the constitution of the department under the Bill. He wished to ensure that Secondary Education would, be represented as well as Technical and Elementary Education.

The Committee of Council had formerly two separate departments, but the system was found to be extremely inconvenient, and the two departments are now amalgamated into one. It would, therefore, be a very unfortunate thing if Parliament were to saddle the new Board of Education with the obligation to have three departments. I understand the Lord President of the Council has given a pledge that there shall be a third additional secretary who shall discharge certain functions, either in connection with some of the secondary schools or some of the subjects that are taught in secondary schools. What these precise functions are has not yet been determined, and cannot well be determined until the organisation of the Department for carrying out the Bill is more advanced. I hope my hon. friend will not ask for any pledge beyond that which has been already given by the Lord President of the Council.

The object of the mover of the Amendment was to obtain an assurance from the Vice-President that the interests of secondary education should be duly and fully considered when the Department comes to be organised. The right hon. Gentleman has said something pointing that way, but I think he might have given an assurance of a more ample character, which would have tended to remove the uneasiness existing in many quarters outside. It is very important that we should carry with us the masters, especially of the great public schools, who have so frankly and cordially intimated their wish to come under the Bill, and to help the working of it by opening their schools to examination and inspection. They had some uneasiness lest the Education Board should not be provided with a staff suited to deal with the question of secondary education, and they had a fear, in particular, that scientific education would be divorced from secondary education in general. The whole object of the reform of the educational system is not to divorce scientific education from literary education, but to bring them into an organic relation to one another, and so to organise the Department, that whoever looks after secondary education should look after it in all its sides, and that the secondary and technical departments should be in the closest possible touch and connection. I do not think that scientific education should be relegated to what might be called the technical department; it ought to be regarded as part of a general liberal education. The technical work, although in a measure scientific, ought not to absorb the whole of the scientific teaching, neither ought scientific teaching to be divorced from the work of the assistant secretary for secondary education. I understand that what I have stated is the object of my hon. friend in moving this Amendment, and I desire to express our sympathy with that object, and the hope that when the Education Department comes to be organised, it will be organised upon such lines as are desired by the friends of secondary education outside.

My right hon. friend, the other day, answered a question upon this point, and his reply seemed to be perfectly satisfactory. He said that secondary education would be represented in the organisation of the Education Office by an assistant secretary, distinct from, and not subordinate in official status to, the Assistant Secretaries who have charge respectively of elementary education and of the Science and Art Department. I do not understand that there is anything in the reply he has just given which is inconsistent with the former statement. I conceive that when the future Education Office is fully organised, the section which more specially represents secondary education will have a staff of its own, selected with a view to the inspection and examination and general supervision of the secondary schools, more particularly on the literary side, and that all the resources which are at present at the disposal of the Science and Art Department will also be available to the Education Office for the purpose of testing the scientific portion of the work done in secondary schools. If I am correct in that supposition, I should concur with my right hon. friend opposite in recommending my hon. friend the Member for the University of Oxford not to press the Amendment.

My hon. friend has specified two matters upon which a distinct reply was hoped for—one as to the status of the third assistant secretary, and the other as to whether his functions were to be entirely confined to secondary education. I am not quite sure whether the reply of the Vice-President was what was wanted on either point. He did not say that the status of the third assistant secretary would be equal to that of the other two, and he used rather ambiguous words as to the functions. He said that this assistant secretary would have a certain section of the subject to look after. Does that mean that a part of secondary education will be dealt with by another assistant secretary, or that this assistant secretary will have other functions besides secondary education? Either would be consistent with my right hon. friend's answer; but what I understand the representatives of the two universities to desire is, that this third assistant secretary should be of equal status with the others, and should be distinctly set apart to look after secondary education.

I would like to support the request for a clearer statement from the right hon. Gentleman. There is an apprehension lest the methods adopted with regard to elementary education, which the elementary educationalists themselves are now recognising as inadequate and inefficient, should be applied to secondary education, and there is also a fear lest the literary side of secondary education should suffer in comparison with the technical. I think the true way of allaying these apprehensions, and, at the same time, bringing about that desired unity beween the different branches of education, will be by providing an assistant secretary of at least equal status with the others, who would have special regard to secondary education. In that way, I think, we shall find, as is being found now in many secondary schools, that the literary and technical subjects are by no means so entirely divorced from one another as has been believed.

I think some definite answer should be given from the Front Bench, if not by the right hon. Gentleman, at least by one of his colleagues, to what is a very specific request. It is bad enough to have to pass a Bill like this, of which no one understands the result, but we certainly ought to have some information as to the organisation of the Department. I learn from my hon. friend the Member for Cambridge University that he understood a promise had been made that there should be a third under secretary, and that the third under secretary should be in an equal position with the other two, and have special duties with regard to secondary education. If that pledge has been given there will be no harm in its being repeated.

I can only repeat again my belief that that is exactly what I said in reply to my right hon. friend the Member for Oxford University. I said that a pledge had been given that there should be a third assistant under secretary; that he should be of equal status to the other assistant secretaries; and that he would have functions to perform in connection with secondary education. But it is quite impossible at this stage to state with precision what those functions would be.

I withdraw the Amendment.

I rise to move the Amendment which stands in my name. I have the best reason for believing that it has the sympathy of my right hon. friend, because when I recently moved an Amendment similar to this in the Grand Committee my right hon. friend supported me by his vote. That Amendment to my regret, and, I think, also to his regret, was not carried, and I thought that it was only respectful to the House that I should give hon. Members an opportunity of reconsidering the Amendment I suggested on this important subject. I do not intend to detain the House by making a long speech on this question, but I would remind the Government that this is a matter which has had a very conspicuous history. The question which is embodied in Section 19 of the Endowed Schools Act, 1869, was one of those compromises which we very often come to in this House on a very thorny and difficult subject. The working of the section has been difficult, but, on the whole, satisfactory. It has taken away from the arena of religious controversy, to which we are so much accustomed in this House, a large number of endowments; but, of course, it has left, first to the Endowed Schools Commissioners, and afterwards to the Charity Commission, a great amount of quasi-judicial authority. We are now proposing by this Bill to transfer these functions to a body which must be by the very nature of things a political body. The Board of Education of the future is to be presided over by a Minister of Education. That Minister of Education must be a member of the Government, dependent, of course, upon the support of the majority in this House, and on whichever side that majority rests, it must in the nature of things be a political majority, and any action that that Minister takes must be—though I have no desire to speak disparagingly of the Minister—political action. And when his decisions are challenged, he must, speaking generally, be supported by the majority on which the Government subsists. To remove religious bitterness from the decision of matters of this kind I contend that it would be wiser, in the interests not only of the Church of England, but of education, to keep the functions I have mentioned in the hands of a body which, after all, is of a quasi-judicial character, and which can be challenged without any detriment to the Ministry of the day.

As the right hon. Member says, I supported an Amendment of the same character as that now proposed in the Standing Committee, as did my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but our proposal was opposed on the ground that it would be a slur on the Board of Education to deprive it of the power of taking, if it thought fit, this particular function of the Charity Commission into its own hands. I sympathise with my right hon. friend, but the Government are not able in this House to support an Amendment which would reverse the decision of the Standing Committee.

I am very sorry to hear the decision an- nounced by my right hon. friend. He appears to think that the Board of Education might feel that some slur was cast upon them if they were deprived of the power of taking this particular function away from the Charity Commissioners. The whole point is this. Under a particular section of the Act of 1869 the question arises whether certain endowments do or do not come within that section. Such questions are decided by the Charity Commissioners. The Charity Commissioners are not a political or removable body; they go on from year to year acting together as a body corporate. They give their decisions on precedents, and those decisions are as legal as if the questions were decided by the Vice-Chancellor or a judge of the Supreme Court. In this respect I believe the Charity Commissioners have always had the confidence of hon. Members on this side. Any want of confidence in the Charity Commissioners has not been due to the fact that they were not acting judicially, but that they were acting as creators and framers of now schools. It does not follow that we are inconsistent because we do not wish to transfer to the Board of Education—a political body—a judicial power. It seems to me that we are perfectly consistent in what we are doing. We are glad that the Charity Commissioners lose the power of framing new schemes, and that it is to be entrusted to the Board of Education. But we do certainly regret and object altogether to the present proposal, and our objection was evidently shared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. friend below me, the Minister of Education, because they voted the other way in the Standing Committee. We submit that the judicial functions ought not to be handed over to a political body, where no precedent will be a guiding precedent and where the Minister of the day may give a decision one way, while the Minister who succeeds him and who belongs to another political party, may, under political pressure, decide that the same form of words may mean something totally different. I hope, therefore, the Government will reconsider their decision.

I should like to say a word or two on the legal character of the functions which are at the present time exercised by the Charity Commission, and which it is proposed to hand over to the Education Department. At the present time all decisions given under Section 19 of the Endowed Schools Act, 1869, and the Endowed Schools Act, 1873, are given as judicial decisions, and not as they might be in the case of a new Board of Education on administrative or on political grounds. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President says that he agrees with the contention which we now seek to urge on the Government. But surely, having regard to the extreme importance of the Bill, we ought on an occasion of this kind to support the view originally taken without regard to what has passed in the Standing Committee After all, in a Standing Committee we do not get the same representation of opinion as we do in the House of Commons itself. There ought to be a distinction between administrative matters and questions of judicial interpretation. We are only asking the right hon. Gentleman to support those Members in this House who think he was right in the attitude he took when the Bill was being discussed before the Standing Committee. I certainly hope that the Government will support the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Vice-President, because, to my mind, this is one of the most vital features of the Bill.

I have only one word to say upon this question. This is a very important Amendment, and I do not think the House or the Government fully realise how difficult the position is with regard to Section 19. That is not my own statement merely. I am only repeating the views of the Vice-President, and now these matters are to be handed over to a new Department. I would ask the Government to remember that the new Board might be under the control not of Unionists or Conservatives, but of their political opponents, to whom would be transferred the decision of the religious and other issues arising under this difficult and important question of the Endowed Schools Act. I hope my right hon. friend will not think it is altogether unreasonable to press this Amendment.

I do not see that this question is, after all, a very important one, taking only this Bill into consideration. The question, however, may become a very important one, say next year, when you discuss the question of local authority. This Bill does not provide any local authority to deal with this question at all; it is a simple Bill to take stock of what schools you have already in the country. Apart from that, several great authorities have given it as their opinion that the transfer of these powers would be a very simple matter. Lord Davey has already been quoted, but I would quote the authority of the Charity Commissioners, who said that there would be no difficulty at all in transferring these quasi-judicial functions to the new Board. The final decision as to what constitutes an endowment as educational will not rest with the Board of Education, but with the Charity Commissioners. I therefore think the question raised is not such a very important one after all, seeing that next year we shall hare a Bill dealing with the question of local authority and the creation of new schools. Consequently I cordially support the view of the Government, and the view that has been taken up by the Standing Committee upstairs.

I really do not understand what the question of local authority has to do with this Amendment. The hon. Member opposite seems to rely largely upon the fact that some other Bill is to be brought in next year. Does he know that another Bill is to be brought in? We have not had an assurance from the Minister in charge of the Bill that a Bill is to be brought in next year.