moved an Amendment to make sub-section 1 read as follows:—" His Majesty may by Order in Council establish a consultative education committee under the Board of Education, to be called the Welsh Central Committee, consisting of members appointed by the councils of counties and of county boroughs and of boroughs, provided that the President of the Board of Education shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Welsh Central Committee done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the committee under this section, and shall have full control over the committee in respect of the exercise of such powers." The proposal contained in the Amend- ment, he said, was one which he ventured to think it was possible to discuss in a conciliatory spirit and without heat of any kind. There had been a conference in Wales at which representatives of different opinions were present to discuss the whole question of the practicability of a Council for Wales. It certainly seemed a reasonable expectation that the same tone which characterised the proceedings of the conference might also be introduced into the debate in this House. The first observation he had to make was that the scheme came before them in a skeleton shape, which was a serious objection. In the very limited time at their disposal they were not to have the advantage of discussing any details of the scheme. It was difficult to see, if this slipshod method of legislation was appropriate and reasonable in the case of Wales, why the Government might not have evaded the very real difficulties which had been embarrassing them for some time by dealing with education in England in the same manner. It was recognised, however, that such a method would be neither constitutional nor convenient, and one explanation only had been put forward of the extraordinary tactics the Government had thought proper to adopt in the case of Wales. The President of the Board of Trade put the justification entirely upon the ground of the unanimity in Wales on the subject of their educational requirements. If there was any real unanimity amongst all denominations in Wales, not merely as to the principle of the proposal, but also as to the immensely important details involved in it, the only right of any Member who was not a Welsh Member to intervene in the debate would be from the point of view of the English taxpayer. From what the President of the Board of Trade had said, one would gather that under him Wales was more unanimous than it had been since the days of Llewellyn. While acquitting the right hon. Gentleman of any intention to mislead the Committee, the claim for unanimity as he put it forward was as misleading as any such claim could be. There was not, and never had been, any such unanimity in Wales, and the Liberal representative of Canarvonshire said at the conference at Cardiff—

"It is useless to pass a general resolution in favour of the scheme when you have no details before you."

That was the Liberal and Nonconformist opinion. The right hon. Gentleman said at that conference—

"So long as we talk about general principles it is very easy to get agreement, but as soon as we try to form a practical plan we find everyone criticising us from every point of view."

It was vaguely alleged that the Anglican and Roman bishops were also unanimously in favour of this proposal The fact was, however, that the Bishop of Llandaff said—

"We want more information. There are important details which we must consider. It is a serious matter if all the powers in the Board of Education are to be vested in an elective body."

The Bishop of St. Asaph said—

"I advise we should hasten slowly, and that a committee should consider the whole matter."

The Bishop of St. David's said—

"This resolution does not go far enough into detail to allow me to commit myself."

Whilst the representatives of voluntary schools who attended that conference were no doubt unanimously in favour of some such proposal as that introduced in the last Parliament or provided by his Amendment, they were not prepared to pledge themselves to the details of this Bill until they were before them, as they ought to be before the Committee of the House of Commons. It was a fact, moreover, that Mr. Lewis Morgan, a Conservative, moved and carried an amendment at he conference providing for an appeal, as in England, to the Board of Education, and not to a national council, and it was on the strength of that resolution such unanimity as was forthcoming was obtained.

That was the second conference.

said that was so, but the importance of the amendment was not diminished by that circumstance, and he wanted to know whether or not the Government were prepared to adhere to the sense of the Amendment. If so, and if such amendment were found to be workable, then a very strong ground of denominational objection would be removed. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade would take an early opportunity of enlightening them upon the matter. A still more important duty was thrown upon the Committee, that of eliciting some elucidation of the all important details. It was clear the Government had not given the slightest attention to the proposal, indeed he was driven to the conclusion that the Minister in charge had not made the investigation of which the Minister for Education spoke when introducing the Bill, or satisfied himself, not as to the broad principles, but as to the feasibility of working them in practice. The President of the Board of Trade was the only Member of the Cabinet in favour of this proposal. The right hon. Gentleman laughed, but in the course of his speech at the Cardiff Conference he remarked—

"If the conference does not pass the resolution, there will be joy among eighteen men in the Cabinet."

Was it suggested that the eighteen men in the Cabinet would rejoice at losing a part of the Bill which they considered to be of some value? It was not without significance that the right hon. Gentleman told the conference that all his colleagues in the Cabinet would rejoico if only they could get rid of that part which dealt with Wales.

The Bill was not in existence then.

remarked that if the proposal for the Council was not in existence, he would like to know what became of the sanction supposed to be given to it by the conference. There was really only one argument of principle used throughout the conference in favour of the proposal. The right hon. Gentleman said—

"All we ask is that we shall be able to co-ordinate the branches of education in Wales. We have complete control of secondary education and also of higher education, but primary education is controlled from Whitehall, so far as administration is concerned. It is important to us all that they should fit in."

The real fact, of course, was that Wales had in intermediate education only, the same degree of independence as his Amendment would give her under the Bill. She never had possessed anything like the same wide and dangerous independence in respect of intermediate education as would be given to her by the proposal of the Government to-day. The only existing difference between Welsh and English secondary schools was that Welsh schools, under the preferential provisions of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act received a Treasury Grant over and above any which was available for the use of English intermediate schools. But the futility of any comparison between Welsh intermediate and elementary education, from the point of view of the Government's proposal, became immediately obvious when it was known that the former affected 10,000 children and the latter 400,000. The most casual observation of the two schemes showed that no argument drawn from the one possessed the slightest value when raised to reinforce the establishment of the other. Nor could any analogy be found in the Welsh Central Board, which really only discharged advisory functions under a delegation from the Board of Education and under conditions which furnished the strongest possible security for the constant exercise of Imperial control. The functions exercised by the Welsh Central Board were comparable to those delegated by the Board of Education to the English Universities in respect of English secondary schools. Summing up this branch of the argument he might claim broadly that since the Act of 1902, which of course applied to Welsh secondary schools, those schools were provided by the authority, aided by grants and subsidised by the Treasury. Over their expenditure and their management the control of the Treasury was constant and direct. The most serious objection to the proposal was the constitutional one. He would like to ask the Minister for Education where was the administrative responsibility to be assigned for the acts of this Welsh Council, and by what detailed steps did he propose to make that administrative responsibility effective? Was a system of checks and balances to develop somehow by a process of physiological evolution? One Welsh Member had said—

"There will be a Minister responsible for the estimate. It will be necessary to create in some form a Welsh Department. Wales must have a Minister whose position will be analogous to that of the Secretary for Scotland or the Chief Secretary for Ireland."

Was that spokesman authorised to make himself the mouthpiece of the Government in making that declaration? Were these some of the incidental details to be filled in afterwards? They were wilfully destroying by this Bill the only possible means by which the control of the Board of Education could be made effective. They were destroying the inspectorate staff, and how could they anticipate an effective control by the Board of Education when it had no independent information, when the whole interest of the Welsh Council was obviously to save the ratepayers and exploit the taxpayers, and the only representative whom they could claim to have in the House would be some official who might not be able in the slightest to control the acts of a body with strong and definite opinions which arrived at its decisions by a majority vote? The hon. Member for the Swansea District had said at the Conference that the Council would have nothing to do with the management of elementary schools, that it would have no power to deal with religious instruction or any of those matters which had been the subject of heated controversy in the last few years, and that there was nothing in the clause to give the Council the right in any way to interfere with the trust deeds or managers of any voluntary schools in Wales. To test these generous assurances he would only ask whether the Minister for Education was prepared to make himself responsible in the House for the conduct and decisions of the Welsh Council acting by a majority and constituted as was apparently contemplated by the Bill? Would anyone suggest that pandemonium would not follow in England, if for a permanent body like the Board of Education they were to substitute an elective body? What would be the difficulties of the House in connection with the Budget? There was another serious point to be considered, and that was the interests of those churches and schools in Wales which did not possess to-day any representation in the House. How far was the right hon. Gentleman prepared to accept Amendments with the view of securing the protection promised to them? Various questions of an administrative character presented themselves. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say in a spirit of very novel conciliation that he undertook to give protection for denominational teaching, and that none of their religious differences should go to the Council. But the Government had failed to see how perversive these religious differences were. Who, for instance, was to decide whether the schools were adequately staffed? He contended that such decision must rest with the Board of Education if denominational interests were to receive adequate protection. He would also like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it was proposed that the Council should be the judge as to whether an individual school was necessary or not, or was there to be an appeal on that point from the Council to the Board of Education? Again, in connection with training colleges under the Bill, it would apparently be in the power of the Welsh Council to sweep away the denominational character of training colleges altogether. Many Welsh churchmen were anxious to be informed whether the power to deal with these training colleges would be one of the powers devolving upon the Council or whether it would devolve upon the Board of Education. He would also like to be informed how the proposals of the Government would affect Section 15 of the Act of 1870. That stern sense of duty which led so many of the right hon. Gentleman's supporters into an unpleasant predicament under the Act of 1902 would still be active under the Bill.

There are no passive resisters in Wales.

said the right hon. Gentleman would concede that this was because their place had been taken by active resisters. Further, he wanted to know whether or not it was proposed in the future, assuming that the objections experienced by highly developed consciences against Clause 4 became troublesome, to apply constraint by the Board of Education or by the Council. The Education Authorities' Default Act had not been included in the schedule as being repealed by the present Bill. He apprehended that on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief the Council would be empowered to exercise it at the expense of a recalcitrant member. The powers under the present Bill were of the greatest possible importance. There were the following most important appeals to the Board of Education and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would say whether those appeals would continue to be to the Board of Education, or would be assigned to the newly created Council. In the first place there was the approval of the arrangements under Clause 2, appeals under Paragraph (a) Sub-section (1) of Clause 2; appeals and administrative action under Clause 4; regulations under public inquiries under Clause 13 (3); decision as to who were owners under Clause 13 (4); powers under the Government Amendments to enable the Board of Education to compel transfers under Clause 2. He wished to know whether the President of the Board of Trade had considered the constitutional difficulties which presented themselves. Were they going to perpetuate an appeal to the Board of Education on all those points? Under Article 10 of the Code the appellate tribunal was authorised to decide whether a new school was wanted, whether existing premises were suitable, or whether the existing schools ought to be continued. What was the administrative machinery which informed the appellate body? The only machinery of the kind was that very Board of Inspectors which they were going to destroy. What he wanted to know was how were they going to set up an appellate body in the shape of the Board of Education when they had taken away every source of information by the aid of which they could discharge their appellate function and without the constant presence of which they could not discharge those functions or any analagous functions in the future. They would be told that it was not necessary for them to assume that all those powers would not be exercised in anything but a charitable and considerate way towards minorities, and that it was malicious and petty to assume that the decisions of the Welsh Council would be actuated by bitter prejudice against the voluntary schools of Wales. If that objection was made they might reasonably ask, not in any spirit of bitterness, what was the position taken up by those very bodies who were now to constitute the new Council in Wales? What was the spirit shown by those bodies when they acted both separately and together during the last few years? They could not, for instance, forget a resolution which was moved at the Llandudno Conference of the North Wales Education authorities in 1902 by Mr. E. R. Davies in the following words—

"That this Conference heartily commends the action of those local authorities which have warned the Government that they would decline to administer this unpopular and oppressive measure if forced upon the country, and that this Conference hopes this example will be followed generally by other authorities throughout the country."

If there was any single right which directly or indirectly placed the rights of denominational schools at the mercy of those who were responsible for this intolerant policy and who held this lawless and insolent language, then this proposal was impossible in any shape or form. They could not forget that the President of the Board of Trade himself in the course of that agitation, in May, 1903, moved a resolution to the effect that until the Education Act was amended Welsh Councils should refrain from applying rates to the support of all such schools. He submitted to the Committee that if that was the spirit which animated the shepherds of the people, some little apprehension might be felt in regard to the sheep, more especially in a fold in which the right hon. Gentleman would not be present. Conciliation to be persuasive must be a plant of mature growth and the right hon. Gentleman's antecedents exposed him to no little suspicion. With every desire to hear what the President of the Board of Trade had to say upon those suggestions, he claimed to have shown that the Government had not given that degree of attention to the administrative difficulties involved which the Committee had a right to demand. Nothing whatever, up to the present, had been placed before the Committee which would enable hon. Members to satisfy themselves that Parliament was retaining any direct or efficient control over the expenditure of public money by this new Council. Whilst the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade and those who agreed with him declared that they were anxious to protect the Tights of minorities in Wales, the Government had not given the slightest indication of any contemplated action except by rhetorical eulogies of the quality of charity, and certainly they had not attempted to work out their pledges in detail. It would not be possible to develop those protective clauses in practice unless they reinforced the Board of Education by a staff of inspectors without the informative assistance of which the exercise of appellate duties was impossible. He begged to move.

Amendment proposed—

In page 20, lines 16 and 17, to leave out the words "central education authority for Wales, to be called the council for Wales," and insert the words "consultative education committee under the Board of Education, to be called the Welsh Central Committee."

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the clause."

said that perhaps the Committee would allow him to intervene at this stage of the debate. The hon. and learned Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool had reviewed the whole of this clause and its proposals, and it was an advantage that he had done so at the very outset, because that would enable him (Mr. Lloyd-George) to cover most of the ground and point out at once in what respects the Government were prepared to meet those criticisms. He would deal first of all with the historical part of the hon. Member's speech referring to the origin of the clause. He did not complain generally of the statement made by the hon. and learned Member, but he pointed out that at the time of the first conference, representative of all creeds, this clause was not in existence. The Bill had not been produced, and therefore he could not have said that the Cardiff conference was in favour of a Council for Wales. The hon. Member, however, was himself in favour of a council of this kind, provided that the administrative details were satisfactory. In that respect the hon. Member represented the vast majority of the Conservatives in Wales. He did not mean to say that every Conservative and every Churchman viewed with approval any sort of council. It would be too much to ask that there should be absolute unanimity in any country on any particular proposal; but here they had a representative conference at which were present two Anglican Bishops, two Roman Catholic Bishops and the majority of the Conservative candidates for Wales. A Resolution was unanimously passed in favour of a National Council for Wales to aid and supply education of all kinds, primary, secondary, and higher. The Resolution was carried in this form on the suggestion of the Bishop of St. David's. He did not think that any country could go further in the way of unanimity than Wales did upon that occasion. It was no doubt the case that there had been considerable exacerbation during the conflict of the last three or four years; but the remarkable zeal on the part of the Welsh people for educational efficiency induced this representative conference to meet and to pass this Resolution unanimously. As a Welsh Member and as a Member of the Government, all he asked was that the Committee should not thwart the unanimous desire of the Welsh people on this question, so that they might be able to meet hon. Members and others reasonably in matters wherein they had good ground for criticism. He would also point out that there were two powerful organs of Conservative opinion in Wales—the Western Mail —he did not think there was an abler paper in the whole country—and the Swansea Post, a halfpenny newspaper with a considerable influence. The two daily papers representing the Unionist Party in Wales supported this proposal. The first conference was held before the Bill had been prepared; but a second conference, representative of Welsh education authorities, was held in June, and expressed its approval of the establishment of a Welsh National Council for Education. The Resolution was proposed and seconded by supporters of the Conservative Party, and was carried with only four dissentients. That Resolution was moved by a Conservative and seconded by a Conservative, and had many Conservative supporters. That showed that this was not regarded as a political question in Wales. When the hon. and learned Member quoted from the speeches of his opponents he ought not to take half a sentence and leave the rest. The statement that the Cabinet would rejoice if the scheme were dropped was made to suggest, not that the Cabinet were opposed to the scheme, but that they were anxious not to overload their Bill. He had no doubt that those quotations were supplied to the hon. and learned Member, and therefore he was not altogether responsible for the imperfect condition in which they had been placed before the Committee. The hon. and learned Member was wrong in saying that in regard to intermediate education there was no autonomy in Wales. Autonomy was complete, and it had been an unqualified success. There was no country in Europe which had made such sacrifices for secondary education as Wales. Some Welsh counties had surpassed even Prussia, and in the matter of rating and voluntary contributions their grants in proportion were very much higher. Wales had rated herself more highly for primary education than Scotland. While in England the whisky money was used for a long time in relief of rates, the Welsh counties had applied the whole of the money to building up their system of secondary education. The result was that, while secondary education was in England largely a matter of class, in Wales 8,000 out of the 10,000 children in the secondary schools came from the elementary schools. Colleges like that at Bangor—to which there was no parallel in the poor districts of England—had been founded by the voluntary contributions of quarrymen and agricultural labourers. The country that was doing that had some claim to come to the House of Commons. He put forward this proposal for a Welsh Council frankly and sincerely on educational grounds. There was an idea that, Wales wanted to set up some sort of infernal machine for the purpose of blowing up the last remnant of denominationalism. If that were done it would be done by means of the county councils. It was not the object of this proposal, he could assure the Committee. As long as educational powers were given to this National Council, he would prefer that no powers should be given by which the religious controversy could be introduced into the Council's deliberations. The success of the Welsh University colleges was attributable to the fact that the religious controversy had been kept out. Any power which would allow the Council to wrangle about religion would destroy its efficiency from the outset. He should welcome any help in eliminating the virus of this religious controversy from the system of Welsh education. As to criticisms of detail, the first Amendment dealt with the question of control. He was not afraid of control, and, if it was felt that real and effective Parliamentary control ought to be retained, he was perfectly willing to agree to Amendments with that purpose. He could not accept the Amendment the hon. and learned Member had moved, because it reduced the Welsh Central Committee to a consultative body. They might cut down the functions of that body if they liked, but they should be administrative functions. He would be prepared to accept the principle of the hon. and learned Member's Amendment on the Paper, which provided that—

"The President of the Board of Education shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Welsh Central Committee done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Committee under this section, and shall have full control over the Committee in respect of the exercise of such powers."

He accepted both of those conditions fully, but he did not think the responsible Minister should be the President of the Board of Education. He thought there ought to be a special Department dealing specially with this body. That would involve a considerable modification of the clause, and it would be a considerable concession to hon. Gentlemen opposite. It meant that there should be a Minister who would be answerable to the House for everything that was done by the Welsh Council in the exercise of its delegated powers, and who would have full control over that Council. He thought there would be no difficulty in appointing a special Minister with a special staff. He might be a Member of the present Ministry holding the office of junior Lord of the Treasury or some other office. The power he would have would be the power of the purse. He would be responsible for the grants. In regard to this matter there was an Amendment on the Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Blackpool, to provide that—

"The Board of Education shall continue to have power to inspect during the hours allotted to secular instruction all Welsh schools in receipt of Parliamentary grants, and shall annually prepare and lay before Parliament a statement of the sum which, in the opinion of the Board of Education, it is desirable that Parliament should grant in respect of education and science and art in Wales."

That meant that the financial responsibility would rest upon this Minister. He could not accept the Amendment in this particular form. What he contemplated was that the Minister should have financial responsibility and financial control. He would also have power over the Code. The Code might be prepared by the Council, but it could only be passed by the Minister, and he would be responsible for it. In this regard the powers of the Council would be consultative. What the hon. Member wanted was that there should be complete responsibility vested in Parliament for this Code; that the Code should not be prepared by the Council, and that financial responsibility for it should not be vested in the Council. He thought that was a sound doctrine. After all, finance depended on the Code. It was quite clear that the Minister who was responsible to Parliament should not part with that power, and therefore he proposed to accept, on behalf of the Government, the substance of the Amendment, and to provide that the Minister should prepare annually this statement and prepare it on the basis of inspection and on the basis of the Code, for which he would have complete responsibility. With regard to the question of appeal, the hon. and learned Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool had catalogued the subjects on which he considered there ought to be an appeal from the Council in Wales to the Board of Education. He would like to know whether the hon. and learned Member's view was not modified by the fact that there would be a Minister responsible to the House. The hon. and learned Member had placed upon the Paper the following Amendment—

"No power or duty of the Board of Education shall be transferred to the Welsh Council which affects denominational interests or religious disputes or, in particular, any of the following matters:—(1) The approval of the plans or site of any elementary school which it is proposed to take over under Section 5 of this Act; (2) the placing of any such school on the annual grant list under Article 27 of the Code; (3) any decision as to whether any such school or any transferred voluntary school is necessary under Article 29 of the Code; (4) the inspection of any transferred voluntary school and any decision as to whether any such school is maintained at a satisfactory level of efficiency, due regard being had to the condition of other schools in the area, or as to the compliance of such school with any articles of the Code relating to efficiency; (5) the decision of questions arising under Section 18 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, so far as they concern any transferred voluntary school; (6) the making of regulations for training colleges and secondary schools; (7) the making of a code of regulations for such public elementary schools as are transferred voluntary schools or Stateaided schools—nor any power of control which the Board of Education shall exercise in respect of State-aided schools, nor any power or duty of the Board of Education arising under Sections 2, 4, 13, Sub-sections 3 and 4, of this Act, nor any power or duty exercised by the Board of Education as successors of the Charity Commissioners, or otherwise in respect of educational charities."

In regard to sub-sections (1), (2), and (3), there was no appeal under the Bill in England, and therefore he did not see why there should be an appeal from the Welsh Council to the Board of Education. Sub-section (5) dealt with the question of unnecessary schools. That was an important matter. He quite understood that hon. Members opposite and their friends in Wales might not be disposed after the recent controversies to trust the Council to decide the question whether a voluntary school was a necessary school or not. He proposed, in a case of that sort, that the appeal should go to the Board of Education. With regard to facilities under Sections 2, 4, and 13 of the Bill, he quite admitted they could hardly ask that, at the present moment, hon. Members opposite should feel absolute confidence in matters of that sort in the Council; and, therefore, they agreed that in cases of that kind it would be desirable that the appeal should go straight to the Board of Education rather than to the new Council. There was a very good defence for such an appeal. In one instance prior to the last Act the salaries paid by the voluntary school managers amounted to £460, but after the Act these salaries were raised to £600, which was not a bad increase in the course of eighteen months. The religious bias had been introduced not by the parish councils but by the Board of Education. As to the question of a sufficient and suitable staff, surely that would not arise. If this Bill became an Act, there would be no voluntary schools. They would all be council schools, and all the teachers in future would be teachers of the council, and there was no reason, therefore, why they should cut down the staff of one school and increase it in another school. The hon. and learned Member did not seem to think that the Board of Education could very efficiently consider these appeals or administer its appellate jurisdiction after it had parted with so many of its powers to a Council in Wales. He did not see why that should be so at all. The only feeling he had got about the whole matter was this. They had been able to carry, he thought he might venture to say, 80 per cent. of the Churchmen and Conservatives of Wales with them in their attempt to set up some sort of local autonomy for primary education in Wales. These Churchmen and Conservatives, who had been devoting their lives to building up their primary and secondary education, were coming in to help them in this matter. They had appealed to the Government for these safeguards. The Government felt they had a right almost to demand them now that they had come in, and would co-operate with them. He felt it was better for them to get an inferior machine, with limited powers, which practically the whole of the people would work from the beginning with a whole heart, without any fear and without any suspicion, than to get a more perfect and more complete machine which half the population would regard only with distrust. That was the reason why, in response to the appeals made to them from Wales, and to the appeal which had been made so effectively by the hon. Member opposite on behalf of such large numbers in Wales who were not represented in the House, the Government were prepared to meet the case in the manner he had indicated.

said that no one who had listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman would deny that it was intended to smooth away difficulties and to conciliate opposition. He was not prepared to deny, without a much closer examination of the proposals than he had been able to give to them, that many of the fundamental objections which he had to Part IV. from the constitutional point of view had been modified by the announcement of the concession the Government were prepared to make. But that fact ought not to blind them to the extraordinary, the almost monstrous—certainly the unexampled—treatment which the Committee and the House had received from the Government, not now for the first time, and not in connection with this Bill alone, in regard to their powers of discussing great and vital changes. They were now working under extraordinary rules, devised for the purpose of this particular measure. If they had been in their ordinary condition of freedom, it would have been his duty, as Leader of the Opposition, to move to report progress, as far as this clause was concerned, in order that the Committee might have time to consider the changes which had been introduced. He was precluded, and the Government knew he would be precluded, from taking any such step on the present occasion. It was, then, incumbent upon the Government as guardians of their debates to give the Committee full notice of the proposals which they intended to make. The Government had had this clause before them for months, and they were perfectly familiar with the general character of the objections which the Opposition had to it in the shape in which it appeared in the Bill. Before the Second Reading he himself called public attention to the fact that the clause conferred administrative and legislative Home Rule on Wales. That was their first objection; and the Government knew the second objection they felt to the clause. Those who followed the action of the Welsh opponents and critics of the Bill of 1902, and not least that of the right hon. Gentleman who spoke to the Committee in such mellifluous accents just now, knew that they had gone beyond the verge of legality in their attempt to destroy, or to minimise, the effect of the Act of 1902. They were justified, therefore, in looking with the extremest suspicion upon any proposal which handed over to a Welsh central body powers to do legally that which these gentlemen had endeavoured to do illegally. The Government being fully seised of the two main objections they felt to the proposal, what was the manifest obligation upon them? Was it to wait until, under the closure, they had but a few hours to discuss the Bill and then to throw at their heads across the floor of the House—and not even in manuscript—a general idea of the Amendments they proposed to introduce? Was it not rather their bounden duty, at the very earliest moment, as soon as they had grasped the character of the Opposition's objections, and had made up their minds what they intended to do to meet those objections, to put down their Amendments on the clause, and let the Committee see how far the wishes of the Government and of the Opposition could really be made to harmonise on the basis of the policy now sketched out by the right hon. Gentleman? But that was not what they had done; what they had done was to allow the Committee to go on discussing the other clauses, to leave the Paper of Amendments absolutely innocent of the smallest hint or suggestion of what they were going to do, and then at the last moment, late in the afternoon of the day on which the closure fell on this clause, to announce a new policy which was not even hinted at in the clause, and with the air of conferring an enormous boon upon the House and country, the Committee in general and the Opposition in particular. If embodied in a Bill the new proposal would require a First and Second Reading and Committee stage; it would occupy long debates in the House, legitimately and necessarily and not under the closure or the highly artificial conditions under which the debates were now carried on. What was the new proposal? It was not merely to give a central authority in Wales for primary education, but for all sorts of education, and to create a new Ministry. The right hon. Gentleman talked in an airy way of some of his colleagues taking up the duties of this Welsh Minister. He did not know which members of the Cabinet had so leisured an existence that they could add to their duties the further duty of dealing with Wales. If the President of the Board of Trade were to be the Minister selected, he did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman's duties were of so light a character that he could gladly add to them the superintendence of education in Wales, and of the necessary staff which would have to be created. Perhaps it was one of the able gentleman now in subordinate place to whom the duties would be allotted. However that might be, or whether the post was given to a new Minister created for this purpose, as he thought ought to be the case, it was an enormous change. It involved a new office, a new occupant of the Treasury bench, and the creation of a staff. He would not say a great staff, but an important staff, for the Minister would require skilled advisers and a body of inspectors, without whom he would be not the controlling spirit in dealing with Welsh education, but the mere servant and mouthpiece of the new Welsh authority. Was ever such a thing heard of in the whole history of the British Parliament as that, without notice, without preface, without offering any excuse, the Government should come down—

And accept Amendments moved by the Opposition.

Which Amendment is there about a Minister? The right hon. Gentleman's interruption was peculiarly infelicitous. Because, supposing one of his hon. friends behind had made that suggestion, the right hon. Gentleman knew very well that a suggestion made by a member of the Opposition acting on his own behalf and independently was not a sufficient notice to the Committee that a great constitutional change was going to be accepted by the Government. Therefore, even if one of his hon. friends had made this proposal, it would not diminish by an iota the gravity of the charge. But as a matter of fact no such Amendment was on the Paper. Never until the right hon. Gentleman got up had it been breathed that a new paid member of the Government, a new staff, a new office, and new duties were going to be set up for a portion of the United Kingdom, a new Minister dealing with Wales as a whole and with no other part of the United Kingdom. That, whether right or wrong, was a constitutional change of the utmost gravity and moment. And when they had got their Minister for Wales, did they think he was going to be confined to education? Did the Welsh Members want him to be confined to education? Of course they did not. He was not discussing the question of Home Rule at all, but this was the beginning, and he did not think the right hon. Gentleman would deny it, of a new system under which Wales was to bear the same relation to this House and to the other parts of the United Kingdom that Ireland or Scotland bore.

^* said they wished to avoid in Wales that very condition of Ireland—that was the object they had in view.

said he was talking, not of the hon. Gentleman's objects, but of the Government's plans. The plan of the Government, unquestionably and admittedly as far as education was concerned, and he thought potentially as far as other administrative work was concerned, was to put Wales in the same general relation with the United Kingdom as Scotland and Ireland were in now; in other words, with an administration of its own, dealing with its own affairs, responsible to this House—not, therefore, embodying the scheme of Home Rule, but entirely altering the status of Wales and its relations to the United Kingdom. That might be good or bad, it might commend itself to Welsh Members, and might not meet with violent opposition from British Members, but would any human being deny that it was a change of the utmost gravity, a new departure the magnitude of which it was almost impossible to foresee? Yet it was to be considered under the closure, without the direction of a First or Second Reading, without the country having been consulted, or even Parliament. Let them look at the Ministerial Benches; they were somewhat fuller now than when the right hon. Gentleman spoke, but still only scantily attended. It was in these circumstances that, without the smallest warning, this amazing statement of policy was made by the Government. The minor aspects of the right hon. Gentlman's speech he deliberately avoided touching on—the question whether the machinery provided for protecting the interests of minorities, and for safeguarding the interests of education was adequate or not. He took his stand and based his objection on the unexampled way in which the Government had treated the House on this question as a whole. Never before had such a proposition been made under such circumstances. It was thrown at their heads within five hours and a half of the moment when all discussions must cease, before a House of Commons which knew nothing of the proposal beforehand. That was a deliberate insult to the House, which no other Government in his recollection had ever dared to inflict.

): What about the last few years when you were in office?

Let the right hon. Gentleman interrupt. During the ast few years when I was Leader of the House, show me an instance in which I ever attempted in this way to check discussion. Show me a case in which I came down in the middle of a gagged Bill and told the House that they were to accept a new scheme for redistributing the governmental powers in connection with the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. No such parallel exists. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell me if there is one?

There were changes in the Act of 1902 that were never even discussed at all—which were carried by the closure.

I daresay there were, Sir.

And a good many too.

Not comparable to these changes.

Much worse.

Not comparable to the changes you have already introduced without discussion. Did we take the Act of 1902 and make it the framework for remodelling the constitution of the British islands? Did, the right hon. Gentleman went on to ask, the late Government make these great changes without giving any warning to the House at all, without giving notice of what they were going to do? Never, never; no such precedent could be found either in the late Government or under any other Government. [An HON. MEMBER: Mr. Gladstone's.] Mr. Gladstone would have shuddered. He knew, of course, that they were helpless in the matter, not merely because they were a minority and a small minority, but because the Government had chosen to make this proposal under conditions which took from them even the ordinary Parliamentary weapons which a minority, however small, ordinarily possessed. The Government had them in their grasp, he granted it. But whether it was to the honour and credit of the House of Commons or whether the proper conduct of legislation in the future would be furthered by proceedings of this sort, he left it to the Gentleman who had interrupted him to consider carefully in his leisure moments. As far as he was concerned, he could do no more than enter his protest in the strongest manner in which it was competent for him to do.

said the right hon. Gentleman had sought, and successfully sought, to raise the temperature of a hot afternoon by a speech in which he ventured to say in all his experience he did not think he had ever seen an artificially engendered passion torn into more minute and infinitesimal tatters. And what was it all about? "Such an insult," the right hon. Gentleman said, "had never before been offered to the House of Commons." He would try, if he could, to bring the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite back to the facts of the case. What was it that had excited the right hon. Gentleman so? Did he really know what it was, and what the proposal was to which the Government had accepted this Amendment? He talked about "gigantic constitutional changes sprung upon the House of Commons." What was the proposal? It was to modify the plan of the Government, which had been before the House ever since this Bill was read a first time, in the direction of securing greater Parliamentary control. What was the proposal in the Bill? He would read the first sub-section, which was more than hon. Gentlemen opposite seemed to have done. It ran—

"His Majesty's Government may, by Order in Council, establish a central education authority for Wales, to be called the Council of Wales."

He paused there to ask was that, or was that not, a proposal on the part of the Government to give to Wales in this matter the same kind of separate educational administrative control as now prevailed in Scotland and in Ireland, and which the right hon. Gentleman had just told them was now for the first time brought before Parliament? Of course it was, and that was the proposal in the Bill itself—that was the original proposal put into the Bill, discussed fully at the Second Reading, and which had been before the House and the country all these weeks. Then what was the crime and the offence which had been committed by his right hon. friend? The whole crime of his right hon. friend that afternoon was that he had accepted in substance an Amendment proposed by the Opposition [OPPOSITION cries of "No"] by a distinguished Member of the Opposition, in which he suggested that the President of the Board of Education should be responsible to Parliament for any act of, and should have full control over, the proposed Committee. His right hon. friend had accepted that Amendment with one single modification—namely, that instead of the Minister for Education, he suggested that some other Minister should be responsible. What, after all, did that come to? Was he not right in saying that the proposal of the Government in its original shape made a far more drastic change in the constitution than the one now suggested, because it set up the Council in Wales without any direct control? In the hope of making the proposal more acceptable to the Opposition, his right hon. friend had agreed that that Council should have a Parliamentary representative, who was to be a member of the Government and who was to have control over the Council. That concession—made with the hope of meeting criticisms, which he did not say were altogether without cause, that proceeded from the opposite side of the House, and of making the original scheme of the Government more in consonance with the views of the House at large—put forward by his right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade was that which had excited all this hysterical indignation. He really thought the Committee might now bring themselves back to consider the actualities of the situation. The Government were prepared to consider and to give due weight to any reasonable criticism of this modification—a modification suggested by hon. Gentlemen opposite and accepted by the Government to meet such objections as they might conscientiously entertain. The clause as originally presented to the House contained everything that was constitutionally new, and in a much more accentuated form. Therefore it was idle to suggest that the Government had taken advantage of the procedure by closure in order to spring upon the House and the Statute-book a proposal of this kind.

said he thought that if the right hon. Gentleman had been present a little earlier and had heard what had been said he would hardly have spoken as he had. They were now discussing quite a different clause from that printed on the Paper and it did not bear any relation to the Amendment of his hon. friend. What was the proposal of the clause? It was to transfer the whole of the duties of the Board of Education so far as Wales was concerned to a Council for which no one was responsible in this House, for whose expenditure nobody was responsible, and for whose action no man here or elsewhere could be held responsible. They were now discussing something perfectly different. It was now proposed that the Council for Wales should be advised by a new inspectorate, and be represented in the House of Commons by a Minister. Who was to be that Minister? They were left quite in the dark. Was the Minister to be a Lord of the Treasury? Was a Lord of the Treasury to deal with the whole question of education in Wales? What was the relation of the Minister to the Council? Was the Minister to have any control over the Council? Could he say to the Council "I will not be responsible for these proposals," and in that case would the matter come to a standstill? Was, there to be an appeal to the Board of Education over his head? They were told that under certain circumstances an appeal was to lie to the Board of Education. He had never heard of a more crude suggestion than this, except the clause itself as it stood in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said he proposed to eliminate the religious difficulty from the purview of the Council. But the Council or the local authorities must deal in some form or other with the schools taken over under Clause 4. It was well known how Welsh local authorities in the past had treated voluntary schools. In Merioneth they had refused to repay to managers charges incurred in order to supply the necessaries of the school; in Montgomery they had refused to pay the salaries—actually earned—of the teachers; in Barry they refused to place a Roman Catholic on anything like the same level, as to staff, as the council schools. Therefore, how could the right hon. Gentleman possibly say that all denominational trouble would be removed from the Council and the local authority when they must consider the taking over by them of voluntary schools and the granting of facilities for religious instruction? The right hon. Gentleman had now made a conciliatory speech, but what did he urge upon the Welsh county council when the Defaulting Authorities Act first came into operation? That the whole of the children in Wales should be turned into the streets and that elementary education should be brought to a standstill. That was very warmly and firmly advocated by the right hon. Gentleman in the first days of the Defaulting Authorities Act, and under those circumstances how could the Committee have any confidence in the clause as it now stood or in the assurances of the right hon. Gentleman when those assurances could only be made effective by a crude scheme such as this involving a complete constitutional change in the administration of Welsh education, a scheme which was not even now set down on the Order Paper for their consideration? And yet they were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had heard nothing of the debate, that they were spurning the conciliatory efforts of the Government. His (Sir William's) experience of the House had not been long, but he had never seen such serious proposals brought forward in such a haphazard manner—pro-posals to which the supporters of the Government paid so little attention and for which they cared so little, as the deserted state of the benches on the Ministerial side of the House made plain.

said he had listened very carefully to the statement of the President of the Board of Trade, and he understood there were to be gathered from it three important matters. They were to have a new Minister in this House with a new department. They were to have a recasting of this clause with a view to allocating certain matters to the new Minister of the new department, and to retaining certain matters, as he understood, in the Board of Education as they at present existed, or in the Board of Education in conjunction with the new Council. He did not know exactly how that was to be worked out. Everyone must see that it was an important change in the clause. The clause itself was a clause of devolution. The proposals that were now made, however, if devolution at all, were in a modified form, and were to be under a department in connection with this House. No one could deny that all these were important matters. Their complaint was that not a single one of these Amendments was on the Paper, and they were not able to say what the effect of them would be, or how far they modified the objections to the clause. The Committee had only four and a half hours left for discussion. Would the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade even now hand across the floor of the House a copy of the Amendments the right hon. Gentleman himself proposed to move, or the Amendments to the Amendments which he said he would wholly or partially accept? Without having the proposals of the Government on paper was it not a farce to continue the discussion? He did not believe the Government had one Amendment ready, because he could not imagine that, having regard to Parliamentary usages, they would not allow the Opposition to have copies of them. What was the Committee to go on discussing?

The Amendments on the Paper.

said the right hon. Gentleman had told them he was going to propose Amendments of his own. Might he ask when he proposed to put down these Amendments?

said it was proposed to follow the usual Parliamentary procedure. He had indicated the Amendments on the Paper which he would accept in a modified form, but which he accepted substantially. When they came to the Amendments they would be able to say exactly what the course would be.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman thought that was quite candid. Did he really think it was a mere nominal Amendment that instead of providing that the President of the Board of Education should be responsible to Parliament for the acts of this Welsh Council they were going to set up a new Minister and a new department?

said he never said a department. What he said was that in substance they accepted the Amendments of the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool and the hon. Member for Blackpool. The substance, in his opinion, was Parliamentary control. In his view the substance of the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool was that first of all there should be a Minister responsible to this House, and secondly that that Minister should have complete control. The Government accepted these two points, which they considered to be the substance. The only difference between them was as to whether the Minister was to be a Minister ad hoc or not. With that difference he would accept the Amendment.

said the worst of it was that they could not put the substance of a thing into a Bill. They must put the specific words. They must know whether this was to be a Minister ad hoc, or whether the work was to be mixed up with some other department. As he understood, this Minister was to have complete control over this new Council. But under what provisions? Were there to be no provisions in the Bill at all to show how that control was to be exercised? Were they willing that the Minister should exercise control without specifying how? Was the right hon. Gentleman simply going to put in the Bill "and shall have full control over the committee?"

"And shall have full control over the committee in respect of the exercise of such powers."

said he failed to see how the Minister was going to exercise control, but it would make him a very much more important Minister. In addition, they were delegating to the Minister a number of other powers. Were they going to set up the financial Resolution that was necessary? The financial Resolution which had been passed by the House merely covered the grant for the local education authority for the elementary schools. It was absolutely impossible to discuss these matters unless the right hon. Gentleman told them more specifically what he proposed to do. It ought to be on paper, so that they might consider and discuss the matter. He did not suppose anyone could say what the exact division of powers between the Welsh Council and the Board of Education was to be. They had now come to a state of confusion —he might almost say of anarchy—in Parliamentary proceedings which was absolutely unparalleled. It would be impossible to discuss in anything like a satisfactory manner proposals of such vital importance.

said it would be a rather unreal performance if he were to move the Amendment on which the Committee was nominally engaged for the moment until they had seen the words which the President of the Board of Trade was prepared to submit to the Committee. Was it of any use discussing his Amendment except on general lines until then? Perhaps after some reasonable interval the right hon. Gentleman would be able to furnish the Committee with the words in writing.

said the hon. Gentleman probably knew all about the details of the negotiations that had been going on upon this subject. The Government were not altogether responsible for the delay in putting these words on the Paper. They were perfectly satisfied with the clause as it stood; and the only Amendments which the Government had indicated to-day as those which they were prepared to accept were in the nature of concessions to hon. Gentlemen opposite. The leaders of the Conservative Party in the Church of England in Wales have been very anxious to get guarantees and safeguards upon this particular point. The Government had asked them to formulate their demands, and had told them over and over again that they were prepared to consider them, but notwithstanding this they had never been able to induce them to do so. The hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool had put down an Amendment and the Government had accepted it, and with regard to his second Amendment he had already told the hon. and learned Member that they were prepared to accept that as well. Personally he had always been opposed to the Government treating the Bill as if every line of it was sacred and must not be altered. In Committee they ought to consider what could be accepted and how the Bill could be put into better shape. For making these concessions he had been told it was an insult to the House to do so. The Government were prepared to accept the substance of the Amendment at the bottom of the page, and also the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Blackpool.

said that the Committee would perhaps allow him to say a few words with reference to the attitude of the Nationalist Members on this question. He thought anyone who had listened to the debate and the vast amount of details which were being dealt with must find in it the strongest possible argument for the principle of devolution. Upon such a question as that dealt with by the Bill, closure by compartments was necessary and inevitable, on account of the morbid condition of business in Parliament and the morbid state of the House. So far as the general policy of the Government was concerned, Nationalist Members were in favour of the policy of devolution. Therefore they took up no position of unfriendliness towards the proposal to create a local body in Wales to have control of such local business as education. Apart from the historic position of Ireland upon this question, they did not forget that in regard to the Irish demands for the application of a similar principle in Ireland they had found no more ardent supporters than the representatives of the people of Wales. For all these reasons it would be quite impossible for the Nationalist Party to take up any position of hostility to the principle of this clause. When various measures in the past had been brought before the House for giving the control of local affairs to Ireland they had always been based upon the fact that there was an overwhelming majority of people of one opinion in Ireland, and a small minority to whom safeguards were granted to protect their religious and political liberties. To proposals of this kind they had always given a full and cordial assent. He thought his right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade had met the objections to this Council for Wales very fairly. The Catholics as well as the Anglicans in Wales were in a minority, and they were grateful to find some safeguards for the protection of those minorities in Wales, and they had been given in no grudging spirit. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to have met in a very candid, fair and generous spirit all the demands made for the protection of minorities, either Anglican or Catholic, in Wales. He suggested that the Government should choose as the representative of the Welsh Council somebody at present outside their own ranks. He understood that practically there had been reserved all those questions which were really dividing creeds in Wales. [OPPOSITION cries of "No, no."] He understood from what the President of the Board of Trade had said that such questions as really divided the sects and religious communities in Wales were not questions which this Welsh Council would be allowed to deal with. Under those circumstances how could Ireland do anything but welcome the carrying out of such a principle in Wales? Ireland had had grave reason for dissatisfaction in regard to some of the proceedings connected with education in the past, but those acts of violence were done in a state of war and as part of a plan of campaign. Now that the Nonconformists had received what they considered satisfaction for their grievances he hoped a better and more tolerant spirit would prevail in the future.

said he wished to emphasise what was the actual truth in regard to this clause, namely, that its only object was an educational one. The Leader of the Opposition and other speakers had referred to this clause as being something new which had been sprung upon the country and the House of Commons at a few weeks notice. He thought it was right that the House of Commons should be made aware that so far as Wales was concerned the principle of this clause had been before them for a great many years, and that at election after election it was one of the questions which had been placed in the fore-front of their political programme. For a quarter of a century there had been a very strong desire in Wales to have such a council established. Reference had been made to a particular school in Denbighshire. Without going into any details it had been implied that the education committee of Denbighshire had been actuated by unfair motives in regard to the standing of that school, and that it would not be safe to grant the powers which this clause proposed to confer. The question of that school was under the consideration of the Board of Education, and he had every confidence that when the facts were inquired into by an inspector an arrangement satisfactory to both sides would be arrived at. From a personal knowledge of the facts he could say that the education committee had been actuated all along by reasons of educational efficiency. He protested against these cases being brought before the House of Commons without an intimate acquaintance with the local facts. What the people of Wales wanted was to unify Welsh education. If this clause passed, by whom was that work to be done? It was to be done by the men who had for many years been selected by the various county councils in Wales for the express purpose of carrying out the work of education in the Principality. He thought it would be admitted by those who had an expert knowledge of Welsh education that there was not an instance in the whole country of men who had done more, and who had sacrificed more time and labour during the last fifteen or twenty years, than those who, when this Welsh Council was established, would desire to bring home more directly to the people of Wales responsibility for the work of education in the future. He was glad the President of the Board of Trade had expressed the willingness of the Government to agree to certain Amendments, which would make Parliamentary control in the matter of the grants absolutely efficient. There seemed to be an idea in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite that the money was not in any way contributed by the people of Wales. The Committee ought to remember that Wales at all events contributed her share of the Parliamentary grants. If inquiry were made into the incidence of the taxation of Wales he thought it would be found that in many respects the people of the Principality, poor as they were, paid more than they ought to be called upon to pay to the Imperial Treasury. All that the people of Wales asked was that, subject to the absolutelyadequate control of Parliament, the Council should have the distribution of the education fund in the Principality. He regretted exceedingly that heat should be introduced into the discussion of this momentous clause so far as Wales was concerned. What they really desired was educational efficiency; they wanted to lift the education of their children out of the rut of sectarian and religious controversy. They saw in this Council the possibility of bringing together to the discharge of this great educational work all classes and all creeds in the community. They had behind them to-day a united Parliamentary representation—something unparalleled in the Parliamentary annals of the country. If this matter could be treated in the spirit in which it ought to be treated, and if the people of Wales were given an opportunity of working out their educational salvation through this clause, he believed that a new chapter would begin in the educational history of Wales.

said he felt some difficulty in intervening in this debate, because he had a considerable feeling at the back of his mind that the Committee were really not at one as to the way in which the question of legislation ought to be approached at all. The clause they were now discussing appeared to be drafted from the point of view that if they laid down in general terms certain principles of legislation the details were of comparatively small importance. Personally he took a precisely opposite view; he thought it was the details that really mattered. A body of men could be collected representing all sections in the House, who would be able to agree on general principles on almost every conceivable topic, and if the principles were made sufficiently general there would not be any difference of opinion at all. The President of the Board of Trade had made a good deal of the Welsh approval; he relied very much on the conferences which had been called, but it was now admitted that no details were submitted to the conferences at all. Only general principles were submitted, and as stated they excited very little opposition. He could understand that the working out of the details would mean a very different thing. The hon. Member for West Denbighshire had talked a great deal about "educational efficiency" and "Parliamentary control," phrases which carried great and deserved weight in this assembly, but he had not condescended to any particulars as to how Parliamentary control was to be established or educational efficiency promoted by the clause. The President of the Board of Trade had accepted the principle of certain Amendments in regard to Parliamentary control, but he had not told the Committee what form the Parliamentary control was to take. They did not know whether the Government were going to make any Amendments on the clause at the present stage or not. All they knew was that the right hon. Gentleman in going through the Amendments singled out two with which, speaking generally, he agreed.

Three.

Three. He would take two as examples. The right hon. Gentleman had accepted the principle of the following Amendment, of which the hon. Member for the Walton Division of Liverpool had given notice—

"Provided that the President of the Board of Education shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Welsh Central Committee done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Committee under this section, and shall have full control over the Committee in respect of the exercise of such powers."

What exactly did that mean? Did it mean in point of fact that the President of the Board of Education or the new Welsh Minister was to defend the policy of education in Wales, in the same way as the President of the Board of Trade defended the policy of the Government with reference to trade, or did it mean something different? If it meant that the Minister was to have full control he could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman did not accept the Amendment now before the Committee, which would make the Welsh Council a consultative committee. That was all it could be if the Minister was really to have the control and direction of policy, subject to any advice he might receive from the Welsh Committee. If this Welsh Minister was not to have complete direction, then Parliamentary control was gone. He earnestly protested against the Committee having to discuss those important legislative proposals without any certainty as to what they were, and without seeing them in print. One of the Amendments showed the impossibility of separating the denominational question from all other questions connected with education. Under these circumstances it was little better than a farce to go on with the discussion of this clause until they had the exact and definite words of the Government Amendments, so that they might be able to see whether the objects they had in view were carried out.

congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the manner in which he had introduced this question of an educational council for Wales, and also hon. Gentlemen opposite on the manner in which the proposal had been received. He could assure hon. Members opposite that their friends in Wales were not at all apprehensive of the possible action of this Welsh Council, and that there was great unanimity on the question amongst all Welsh people; he believed it would do much to dissipate the bitter feeling of the past, and bring about a better understanding amongst all classes. He was very glad to say, on behalf of the Party he represented, that the suggested new clauses were satisfactory to them; and he trusted that they would give the same satisfaction to the noble Lord opposite, and the hon. Members surrounding him. At any rate, in his opinion, the proposal of the Government would do some good to the cause of education in Wales.

said he would like to suggest that they were still engaged in a Second Reading discussion, and that they had only four hours left for the consideration of the Amendments. That was not too much in which to revolutionise the constitution of Wales.

^* said that he had to the fullest extent sympathy with hon. Members from Wales in their hopes that the changes proposed by the Bill would lead to the advance of education in the Principality or to the cessation of the bitterness of partisanship. But he was afraid that he could not share the confidence of these hon. Members as regards the probable results of such administrative changes, or the advantages of the scheme of devolution proposed. Members like himself were placed in a difficult position by the course of the Government. They had come to the House prepared to criticise the proposals of the Bill, which amounted to a scheme of devolution. They found many reasons to object to that scheme. It provided no safeguard for the maintenance of Parliamentary authority: for the approval of the Code: for the audit of public money: for the sanction of loans pledging the public credit: and for the prevention of mal-administration of public funds. It might seriously interfere with the rights of teachers by confining them to a narrow area. It comprised together two essentially different things, central and local administration. But the proposal of the President of the Board of Trade was something entirely different. It amounted to the appointment of a Minister for Wales, who was to have some sort of control over the proceedings of this Welsh Council. This was a fanciful and an unworkable scheme, and it proposed a great constitutional change with altogether inadequate consideration. He contended that no effective control could be exercised over the central body in Wales by a Minister at Whitehall. He would like to know what were the views of the Chief Secretary for Ireland as to the control which he could exercise over a similar Board in Ireland. It was for that reason that he wished to hear the full views of the President of the Board of Education on this question. What was the reason for the refusal of the right hon. Gentleman to accept the responsibility for the acts of this council? Was it not because he was aware that he would have a heavy responsibility, but no effective control? The fact was that the new proposal was one which had been quite insufficiently considered, which was both unconstitutional and unworkable, and which had been thrust upon them in an unintelligible form. He could not understand the comments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. Surely the indignation of the latter right hon. Gentleman was justified. What previous enactments had they to guide them in regard to legislation in this matter? In Scotland, where although the system of education had been based on a separate series of statutes for three centuries, yet they never had a separate Minister for Scotland till the year 1885, and then it was only after a Bill had been before Parliament for years, and the arrangement was only brought about by the complete agreement of both Parties. The Bill was brought into this House by a Conservative Ministry, but it was managed in the House of Lords there by Lord Rosebery, who was not a member of the Government at all. The Government, however, proposed to establish a Minister for Wales not by an Act of Parliament, but by a side wind upon an afternoon four hours before the closure fell, and at the instance of a Minister who did not give the words of his proposal by which he meant to alter the constitution of the country.

said that after the discussion which had taken place and the assurances which had been given, he thought he should be acting in accordance with the wish of the Committee if he withdrew his Amendment in order to give time for the discussion of other important Amendments.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

submitted an Amendment which he said embodied the proposal brought forward by the late Government, and which he said would make this Council or Committee precisely correspond to the Joint Committee which was proposed by the late Government and accepted by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade as an adequate representation of the local authorities in Wales. He should like to know whether the President of the Board of Trade would consent to the Committee being enlarged as he suggested.

Amendment proposed—

"In page 20, line 17, to leave out from the word 'the,' to end of sub-section, and to insert the words 'local education authorities under Part I. of the Education Act, 1902, and boroughs and urban districts having powers under section three of the same Act.'"—( Sir William Anson. )

Question proposed, "That the words down to 'any' in line 18 stand part of the Clause."

thought that if the hon. Baronet was more fully acquainted with the conditions of Wales he would find that the words as they stood in the Bill would work very much better than those which he proposed. He understood that the hon. Baronet wanted to represent areas of 10,000 inhabitants, but there were difficulties in the way in regard to counties, in regard to North and South Wales, and in regard to rural and urban areas which they had considered, and if they gave representation to all the areas with a population of 10,000, they would find it absolutely impossible to give a fair representation to the agricultural parishes. He thought that the hon. Baronet would agree that it was important that those parishes should be well represented on this council. They did not want the urban areas to be over represented, and it was in order to secure that object that the words had been introduced into the clause.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved to insert the words, "Provided that the President of the Board of Education shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Welsh Central Committee done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Committee under this section, and shall have full control over the Committee in respect of the exercise of such powers." The hon. Member said that in his previous speech he had indicated the nature of the Amendment so he would not enlarge upon it. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had not replied to a consequential Amendment to the one he was now moving, which proposed, at line 25 of the clause, after "repre- sentatives," to insert "and that regulations shall be made by the Board of Education whereby the minority of each of the constituent local authorities shall appoint to the Council a number of representatives bearing the proportion of one to three to the number appointed by the majority of that authority." In order to elicit the right hon. Gentleman's views on the point, he therefore moved the present Amendment.

Amendment proposed—

"In page 20, line 20, at end, to insert the words, 'Provided that the President of the Board of Education shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Welsh Central Committee done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Committee under this section, and shall have full control over the Committee in respect of the exercise of such powers.'"—( Mr. F. E. Smith ).

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

said that, as he had already indicated, he proposed to accept the substance of this Amendment, and he would now point out the way in which he proposed to deal with it. It was not his fault that he could not state his views till twenty minutes to seven, but it was the result of the action of the Leader of the Opposition earlier in the evening, who had sought to inflame the passions of the House. He proposed to move to amend the Amendment and to make it read, "The Order in Council shall provide for the appointment by His Majesty of a Member of Parliament, whether a Member holding office under the Crown or not, who shall be responsible for any act of the Welsh Council done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Council under this section, and shall have full control over the Council in respect of the exercise of such powers."

suggested that the Amendment should be withdrawn and that the Amendment as it was proposed to be amended should be placed before the Committee.

approved of the suggestion. The Government was altering the constitution of the country in regard to Wales by a series of Amendments to an Amendment. He thought their method of doing it was childish and absurd, and the suggestion of the Chairman was one which the Government would be well advised if they adopted.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved the proviso in its altered form.

Amendment proposed—

"The order in Council shall provide for the appointment by His Majesty of a Member of Parliament, whether a Member holding office under the Crown or not, who shall be responsible to Parliament for any act of the Council of Wales done in the exercise of any of the powers of the Board of Education delegated to the Council under this section, and shall have full control over the Council in respect of the exercise of such powers."—( Mr. Lloyd-George ).

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

said he hardly grasped the full import of the Amendment, and expressed a desire to ask the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill to state exactly what was meant by "a Member of Parliament whether holding office under the Crown or not." He supposed that that meant that the duties might be given to a Minister now in office, and that he should add to his office the duties of Minister for Education for Wales, but that it was not intended that a Member who was not already a Minister of the Crown should have this duty put upon him without becoming a Minister of the Crown in an effective sense. Supposing the clause passed in the form in which the Government desired it to pass, it would then be necessary to appoint a Minister for Education for Wales and to hand over the educational affairs of that country to him. The gentleman would, he supposed, become a Minister holding office under the Crown in the ordinary way and vacating his seat on the acceptance of office. The right hon. Gentleman's legal advisers were not present, but this touched a question of prerogative, and he should like to know exactly what was meant.

said he would like to know whether there was any precedent for the creation of a new Minister of the Crown by Order in Council.

said the Law Officers of the Crown would be in the House in a moment and would answer the right hon. Gentleman. He could not undertake the responsibility of answering such a question. With regard to the other questions, what was contemplated was that somebody already holding office under the Crown might become responsible, or that some Member of the House might answer for the Council in the same way as an hon. Member now answered for the Charity Commissioners. The Government had taken power to utilise the services of a Minister of the Crown or to ask an ordinary Member of Parliament to represent this Department as an ordinary Member of Parliament now answered officially for the Charity Commissioners.

said that as the discussion went on it became more and more difficult to understand the precise position contemplated. The Government meant to take power to appoint a Member of Parliament not a member of the Government to be responsible for controlling the Welsh Council. He was to be responsible for presenting estimates to this House and was to answer for those estimates. He was to take all the functions of a Minister of the Crown; he was to have the power of appointing clerks and to have a staff to be paid out of the Estimates; his position, however, was to be analogous not to that of a Minister of the Crown, but to that of the gentleman who represented the Charity Commissioners. Such a thing was anomalous and preposterous to the last degree. He could not believe that when the Government came to understand their own Amendment they would oscillate between the two courses of appointing a Minister of the Crown to perform all these alien duties and appointing a Member of Parliament who was not a Minister, but whose position was to be similar to that of the gentleman representing the Charity Commissioners. It was preposterous and absurd. Where was the Parliamentary responsibility? Where were his powers of control? Was he to have a salary on the Estimates, and were his actions to be actions for which his colleagues were responsible or not? Was he to vacate his seat upon taking office? He had really come to the conclusion that the Government had not; given five minutes thought to this proposal, and that the Minister in charge of this part of the Bill had thought of the scheme for the first time at ten minutes past three on the 17th of July. The question he again asked was, did he propose to appoint a new Minister by an Order in Council. The thing had never been done or thought of before. And if it was possible to constitute a new Minister by an Order in Council, was that Minister to be a Minister in the same sense as right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Were they to be responsible for him? Was he to have a salary; and, if so, was the salary to be on the Estimates, or whence was it to be provided? Because he noticed the Government had taken no power to provide a salary. That itself was a sure proof that when the Resolution was put before the Committee this wonderful scheme had not occurred to the President of the Board of Trade. He hoped now that the Solicitor-General had come back they would have a reply to the questions; asked on this constitutional matter.

said he assumed that this gentleman who was to be appointed would have a salary; and that that salary would be on the Estimates. He asked under those circumstances whether the Committee was in order in discussing this question without the Resolution.

was understood to say no power was taken to provide a salary.

said that in those circumstances it was impossible for this Minister to be paid, that he would have no salary to be reduced, and to that extent the control of the House was lost. They all knew that a Minister of the Crown or a Member of the House could not be criticised except when responsible for a policy, which responsibility could be brought home to him on the Estimates on a Motion to reduce the salary. It was for that reason that he thought every Minister should be paid. Was it intended that a peer could be appointed to this particular office? And was there any precedent for the appointment of a Minister, either paid or unpaid, being appointed to an office, however humble, by an Order in Council?

said the noble Lord seemed to assume that the only way the action of a Minister could be criticised was on a Motion on the Estimates to reduce his salary. But the Prime Minister had no salary at all, yet the actions of the Prime Minister were criticised. Everyone was aware that a certain sum was allotted for carrying out the functions of this Council, and that every action of the Council could be discussed when that Estimate came before the House.

^* again asked whether there was any precedent for appointing a Minister by an Order in Council. He was informed that there was not. And with regard to the appointment of unpaid representatives of the Charity and Ecclesiastical Commissioners, he might point out that that was also by statute. He would further like information on another point. This Minister, who might be an ordinary Member of Parliament, was to represent the Council in the House; he was to ascertain from the Council what sum they wished to lay before Parliament as their educational expenditure for the year; he was to lay the amount before the House and defend it. How was he, an unpaid representative, to be connected with a body of unpaid representatives? What was there to bring him in touch with them? He was stating what he believed was a genuine difficulty and he would like an answer. What was the connecting link between the Minister and the Council, because the connecting link between a Minister and the work he had to do was usually the permanent staff by which that work was conducted; a staff which framed the estimates and prepared and dealt beforehand with the various points which had to be dealt with by the Minister in Parliament. Had any preparation been made for a permanent staff in this matter? He would like to know what would be the relations of this Minister to the Board of Education. Was there to be a complete severance between the system of education in England and that in Wales? He wanted to hear something from the President of the Board of Education, who must have more experience than the President of the Board of Trade or the Solicitor-General on these points. Had the Minister for Education considered how this proposal would bear on the general scheme of education and the work of his Office, when his Department had a considerable and sometimes exciting branch cut off from it and handed over to another Minister. Again, had the President of the Board of Trade decided with what Department of the Government this new Department should be connected? He would ask whether there was any precedent for this mode of appointment, how the Minister representing Welsh education would be connected with the Council for which he was to be responsible to the House of Commons, what would be his relations, if any, to the Board of Education, and with what Department of the Government he was to be connected?

said the hon. Baronet had contended that the mode of appointment now suggested was unknown to the law. What was the suggestion? It was that the Minister it was proposed to bring into being should be appointed by Order in Council under the authority of this Bill. It was quite true that it was not usual to appoint a Minister by Order in Council; but if they authorised by Act of Parliament the appointment of a Minister by Order in Council, they needed no precedent. Parliament was able to do that as it was able to do other things. They were proceeding in the ordinary way by creating powers and indicating how an appointment was to be carried out, namely, by Order in Council. They were exercising a normal power properly exercisable by Parliament. The hon. Baronet had asked a number of questions which seemed to him appropriate to the Order in Council, but by no means requir- ing development now. This Minister, whether he had a salary or not, would have a Department. If he had a salary, I it would come before Parliament on the Estimates. But that was not the only means by which Parliament could exercise authority. The Council which it was proposed to set up must have funds, and those funds must pass through Parliament. Therefore, Parliament would have the most effective of all means of exercising control. They would have the means of stopping the money. In these circumstances it did not seem necessary to put into an Act of Parliament all those details which were more appropriate to the Order in Council.

ventured to think that the House had never in the whole course of its history been confronted with a situation which offered any parallel to the proceedings of the Government this afternoon. They were taking a departure for which there was no precedent. For centuries Parliament had regarded with jealousy any inovation in the framework of our Parliamentary constitution, and now, during the last stages of a Bill dealing with education, they were asked to make a change which had never been contemplated before, and which had not been explained to them to-day. The Solicitor-General got up to reply to the very pertinent questions put by his right hon. friend the Member for Oxford University, but had he given an answer to any of them? He had said that there was no I precedent for the appointment of a Minister by Order in Council. Though it was within the prerogative of the Crown to create a new office in theory, as a matter of constitutional practice the prerogative was not used for that purpose except on the advice of the responsible Ministers of the Crown; in fact, on the advice of the Cabinet with the knowledge and concurrence of the Prime Minister. The Crown could create a new office provided there was no necessity for spending money on the department. According to "Dodd" it rested with the Government exclusively to determine whether any such changes were necessary in order to secure greater efficiency of the public service, and "they are effected by Order or Declaration in Council, an Act of Parliament being required only in cases where it is necessary to make pecuniary provision for the duties to be undertaken by the new Department." Did the argument of the Solicitor-General really mean that Amendments handed across the Table in manuscript, after two or three hours of pertinent inquiry as to the intention of the Government, were the kind of legislation contemplated by the sentence he had read? When an Act of Parliament was required, Ministers should introduce a Bill creating the new department. An Amendment could not be slipped in when dealing with legislation of a totally different character. The action of the Government was not only unconstitutional but illegal, because he did not believe a new department could be brought into being without a Resolution authorising the necessary expenditure. The Government was throwing all constitutional practice to the wind, and departing from all the financial control of the House at the instance of Ministers who had ventured to declare the intention of the Government only after having been subjected to severe cross-examination. Let it not be assumed that the anxiety they on the Opposition side felt with regard to this matter was assumed. Whether this Bill passed into law or not might be very important, but it was more important that they should not treat with levity so great a departure from constitutional practice as the creation of a new department in this way. The Government did not even tell them the nature of the new department which was to be created by this novel, unconstitutional, and illegal method. The Committee were told vaguely that in certain circumstances estimates would be necessary and Parliament would be able to criticise those estimates. That was a totally novel view of the bond which attached a Minister to this House and of the responsibility which rested upon him. It was a part of the Constitution that no Minister should take office unless he had real control and was in fact, as well as in name, the responsible party. By this proposal they were striking at one of the foundations of the constitution. The whole edifice of the constitution was built upon the real responsibility of the Cabinet and the personal responsibility of each Minister. It was a part of the Constitution that no Minister should take office unless he had real control. Was this new Minister to have control over all the actions of the Council, or was he not?

said the Committee had been informed hat a salaried department would be created under the new Minister. He asked whether, in view of the ruling already given, it was now in order to move or further discuss this Amendment.

said it was not proposed to create a new staff. At the present time the Board of Education looked after Wales. The officials appointed for that purpose would still have to do their work, and would be taken over for the purpose. The question was simply one of organisation. No new officials would be appointed, and there would be no additional expenses.

^* did not think the Amendment which was the real question for his consideration made any fresh charge or raised any point on account of which he could rule it out of order.

pointed out that a new department would not cease to be a new department because it was manned by old officials. The proposal of the Government was to transfer certain officials of the Board of Education and constitute them a separate department under a new minister. That was not denied. There would be a body of subordinate officials all owing allegiance to a single Parliamentary chief. That would be a new office. He believed such a new office could not be constituted by Order in Council. An Act of Parliament would be necessary for the purpose, and such an office could not be constituted by this Act of Parliament. The constitution of the office involved expenditure, but under the Resolution of the House he did not believe they could do anything except provide money to be distributed among the local education authorities. How was provision to be made for the payment of the new staff? Was the Minister for Education going to respond for estimates which referred to persons under someone else's orders? The Education Estimates for England were going to be diminished by this amount and a new set of estimates would be constituted for Wales, and the office in connection with them would be a new office. That new system could not, in his judgment, be established without an Act of Parliament. He was, however, really more concerned with the unexplained position of the new Parliamentary Minister. He put a good many questions to the President of the Board of Trade before the law officers of the Crown came in, but he would venture to repeat them. He would like to know whether the Minister appointed would vacate his seat upon appointment. For his own part he believed it would be necessary for him to seek re-election. The greatest change that ever took place in our constitutional history was that of making every Minister responsible for the acts of every other Minister, and making the Cabinet responsible for the policy of any one of its members. He also desired to know whether the new Minister would be a responsible Minister in the sense in which we understood that term. Would the Cabinet be responsible for his action? Would he consult the Cabinet on any question of importance? Then it appeared that the Minister in charge of Welsh education was to have no salary in that capacity. He had listened with astonishment to the dictum of the President of the Board of Trade that it did not matter whether the Minister had a salary or not, because what was attacked was not his salary, but the estimates he presented. Where did the right hon. Gentleman get that constitutional doctrine? Would anyone deny that if any other Government but this had suggested such a proposal it would have been denounced as the greatest and most scandalous innovation? Was there anything more utterly opposed to constitutional principles as understood by the Liberal Party? When the House criticised the action of the Welsh Education Department it would be necessary to challenge the salary of some permanent official who was not responsible. If the Government were going to destroy that boast of the British Constitution, the doctrine of Cabinet responsibility, and its strict application through all departments, they would have done a great deal of work in their first session.

said that, in replying to the first question which had been put to him, and speaking from recollection, he should say that whether or not this Minister would vacate his seat would depend upon whether or not his office was one of profit. Unless the Office was one of profit, the Minister would not have to vacate his seat. There was no limit whatever to the power of the Crown to create offices to which no profit was attached. The next question was whether this new Minister was to be a responsible Minister. In what sense was "responsible" used? The responsibility of every Minister now sitting on the Treasury bench was really the responsibility of the Cabinet. In that sense, of course, this Minister would be a responsible Minister. It was not salary that made a Minister responsible.

I can quite understand the answer of the hon. and learned Gentleman on that point. I wish to know how that tallies with the statement of the President of the Board of Trade that the position of this Minister would be analagous to that of the Gentleman who so ably responds in this House for the Charity Commissioners?

replied that even the Gentleman who responded for the Charity Commissioners had a certain responsibility. He was not a member of the Ministry, certainly, or his responsibility would be more marked. The Order in Council would reply to a great many of the questions which were now put forward as though they were constitutional difficulties. The right hon. Gentleman opposite had said that either this Minister must have a salary or somebody must act for him or under him who should receive some remuneration which could be put upon the Estimates, and he asked what provision had been made in the Estimates. Nothing would be done this year, and no financial provision need be made until next year, when it would be put upon the Estimates in the ordinary way. This was a question very largely of departmental reorganisation, and not new work. It was work which in a large measure had been done previously. The clerks who had done it were there, and would probably go on doing the work. Some new expenditure would probably grow out of this new departmental reorganisation. He never knew a reform yet which did not involve expenditure, and even expenditure greater than that which it was supposed to reduce. He was surprised at the language used by the right hon. Member for Dover, who spoke as if the foundations of the Constitution were at stake. Looking at this humble and modest measure of departmental reorganisation, it did not strike him personally as going quite so deep down to the foundations of our Constitution as certain suggestions he could remember about "co-ordination."

^* observed that at the beginning of the session a discussion arose which involved the question whether the vacation of office depended on salary, and it was established that an office might be vacated although no salary attached to it.

said the discussion referred to was in regard to an office of profit, although no salary was taken.

said it was a question whether an office was held "of the Crown" or "under the Crown. The question had not been answered. What were to be the relations of this new Minister with, the Board of Education. Here was another gap in the Government proposal. They proposed to create another department—a Welsh department—and they proposed to transfer to that department the duties and officers of the present Board of Education. Could they do that without statutory authority? When some of the duties and staff of the Charity Commission were transferred to the Board of Education provision was made for this in the Act of 1899. What did the Minister for Education think of the transfer of Welsh education to another Department?

observed that what was certain was that the broad policy of this section had been adopted not only by this Government, but by the late Govern- ment. It was quite right that educational affairs in Wales should be treated in Wales by a Welsh body. The section they were now discussing did not pretend to give the details of the whole arrangement, but merely asked the Committee to give statutory authority for the creation of that body. He would remind the Leader of the Opposition that in April, 1887, the appointment was made of a Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Ireland, and Colonel King-Harman was appointed by the present Member for the City of London. The appointment of Colonel King-Harman was an appointment made, not only without statutory authority, but with out the consent of Parliament at all. The present Lord Privy Seal, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, attempted to raise the question on the Civil Service Estimates, and the Chairman said he did not think it would be appropriate to raise that question. Then the right hon. Gentleman said—

"I bow, of course, to your ruling, Sir; but as the right hon. Gentleman, the First Lord of the Treasury has attempted to justify the appointment, I wished to enter a protest on that point. I will not pursue the matter one sentence further. I should have been glad of another opportunity of saying that I consider that the creation of any new office under the Crown, whether or not its acceptance involved the vacating of a seat in this House—for I do not lay stress on that point—without the consent of Parliament is unconstitutional."

That was an appointment made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite; and it appeared in the course of the debate that great complaint was made with reference to the position of the hon. Gentleman who had been so appointed. This was what his hon. friend the Member for East Mayo said in the same debate in reply to the then Leader of the House—

"The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury distinctly stated that the chief object of calling the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King-Harman) to the position he now occupies was, that he should assist the Government with his knowledge of Ireland and with his advice in modelling great measures to be laid before Parliament. In my ears that was a most ominous declaration, because it amounted to this, that not only were we, in the future, to look to the influence of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Thanet Division of Kent in the administration of the law in Ireland, but even in the shaping of Irish legislation he was to be behind the scenes. Having that in my mind, there are certain things that have occurred in Ireland quite recently, which, in view of these facts, are exceedingly interesting. Within the last fortnight a practice has been revived in Ireland which has been renounced for three years, the practice of calling what are known as Rival Loyalist demonstrations in Ulster for the purpose of suppressing liberty of speech."

If the King in Council authorised the appointment of a Minister, either as a Minister of the Crown or as a Member of this House it would be done with the strictest Parliamentary authority. If that were done immediately the appointment of the hon. Gentleman was made, whether he was a Minister with or without salary, he would draw up Orders in Council, and these ought to be the legitimate subject of criticism in Parliament. Therefore, he submitted that the Committee would do well to receive the proposal of the Government, because they would then have Parliamentary control over the acts of the Council in Wales.

^* said that both by the last speaker and previously in the debate complaint had been made that the Opposition had not properly received the concessions that had been made. He very frankly acknowledged that an effort had been made by the President of the Board of Trade to meet the demand made by hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Opposition Benches; but the difficulty was that they did not know exactly what the concessions were. What they asked was that the President of the Board of Education should be responsible for the Welsh Council, but now they were to have a gentleman of whom they were not told whether he was to be a Minister or not. The Solicitor-General in his last speech had said that the gentleman who was to represent the Welsh Council in the House was to be a Minister. What he wanted to know was whether the new office was to be an office of profit under the Crown or not. The concession which had been made by the President of the Board of Trade was not on the Paper, he did not think the learned Solicitor-General had seen the Amendment before he came into the House; evidently the concession had been made without the Government having thought it out. His inclination was to move the adjournment of the House for an hour, in order to enable the Govern- ment to bring in a proper clause which they could understand.

said there was one important matter which had not been cleared up, and that was how the Minister was to deal with the Council in Wales. In the first place the Council was to consist of members appointed by the councils of counties and of county boroughs and of any boroughs and urban districts having a population of over 25,000. That was a popularly elected body, and how would it act? It would act by the decision of a majority. Supposing that body did not agree to the policy of the Minister, all that the Minister could do was the next time that the Estimates came before the House to advise the House to stop supplies because the Council had refused to carry out his policy. That was a ridiculous proposition.

^* said he would like to raise another point. Supposing that a county council in Wales refused to grant the religious facilities allowed under the Act under Clauses 3 and 4, and was backed up in this by the Council for Wales, what course could the new Minister for Welsh Education pursue? It seemed to him that in such a case the Minister would be flouted by the Council and he would have no authority in this House. That was one of the many absurdities created by this most unworkable scheme. It was perfectly certain that if there was any part in the United Kingdom in which such questions should be settled from the outside, it was Wales; and he hoped the Minister for Education would give some assurance that there would be a measure of appeal from the action of the Council for Wales to the Board of Education. It was much to the credit of the President of the Board of Education that the moment the task of piloting this impossible Bill through the House fell into other hands than his, the Government were landed in the most hopeless tangle that they had yet been involved in.

) said he did not rise for the purpose of taking part in the discussion upon the constitutional question, of which a great deal more had been made than the occasion warranted. He rose because the hon. Baronet had asked what would be the relations under this new arrangement between the new Minister for Welsh Education and the Board of Education. He thought the Committee sometimes forgot that they had had before them for a long time Part IV. of this Bill, which had been described as crude by the hon. Baronet. No doubt it was faulty in some respects, but it enabled the Board under sub-section (5) to pay to the Council in Wales money granted by Parliament in respect of education and science and art in Wales with the exception of money granted in aid of universities and university colleges. He admitted that there was no indication in Part IV., as it had stood in the Bill all these weeks, of what Parliamentary control there would be over the Welsh Council, or of what his position, as President of the Board of Education, would be with regard to the money that was to be allocated. The subject had given him considerable personal anxiety, and it was a mistake to suppose that it had not received the careful consideration of the Government, though he thought, quite frankly, that it was unfortunate that it was left to the Amendments on the Paper to bring out the concessions which the Government proposed to make. The hon. Member opposite wished, in order to secure freedom from religious trouble in this new Council, to reserve to the President of the Board of Education certain appeals which might arise under the Bill. He said quite frankly that he would much sooner be quit of the whole job than not. By that he meant that he would much sooner be free from all responsibility with regard to Wales. He thought the speech of his right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade must have satisfied those who listened to it that Wales was a country which was justified in the demand it made to have control in a larger degree than any other part of the country over its education, and that there was a most remarkable consensus of opinion in favour of a Council in Wales. But Part IV. left the Board of Education in, he thought, an improper and pangerous posi- tion. He had never been happy under it, and, accordingly, he spent plenty of time in endeavouring to secure that there should be proper Parliamentary control. It had been suggested that Parliamentary control should rest on him, but he did not think any one could run the two systems of education at the same time. The intention and desire was, he thought, to encourage the Welsh people to fix their own curriculum and to develop their educational system on their own lines, and that they should not be hide-bound or confined by the ideas prevalent in Whitehall relative to English education. Therefore, it was contemplated, undoubtedly, that the new Council should have a very considerable voice and say in the matter, but it was also understood that the new Minister would be responsible for the Code, and would be able to strike out any part of it which he felt could not be justified, and which might lead to an extravagant or other improper mode of distribution of its funds. He felt, as he had said, that it was impossible for one man to run the two horses at the same time, and that it was absolutely necessary that there should be a separation of the offices. But he trusted that there would always be, on account of the similarity of their work, between the Welsh Department and the English Board of Education, a perfect understanding and sympathy. He honestly believed that, although this was an experiment—an undefined experiment, in some respects, he agreed—it was an experiment which the Committee could very safely make, having regard to the limited nature of the duties that were to be entrusted to the Council, to the fact that a Minister was to be responsible for it, to the great concessions made by his right hon. friend, and to his perfect willingness to take away from the purview and scope of the Council those vexatious and troublesome questions which excited so much ill-feeling, but which, he hoped, as days went by, would be dissipated into thin air. He really thought, apart from the question of the position of the Minister, which might be worthy of consideration, that the time had come when the House might deal with this matter without much anxiety, and without treating it as a question of enormous constitutional importance. After all, it was a question which had been in the air for many years, and Gentlemen opposite, he believed, had contemplated it in some fashion or another. It was a thing well known and discussed in the Education Office, where they would be glad if they could lighten their work. They were not afraid of being shorn of some of their authority; they were not that kind of office. They had got enough work of their own to do, and they were willing to transfer to faithful shoulders the work in Wales. It was a question, too, which had been well discussed not only in Parliament, but in Wales, and there was not a man in the House or in the country who had not the bona fide belief that the Welsh people were perfectly competent to look after all branches of their education. Their sacrifices and the zeal for education among all classes proved it. He should have thought himself that the plan was open to a good deal of objection, and that a democratic country might have objected to representatives being appointed not directly by the people, but he would not enter on that. It was on the footing of a council of that kind that they could go forward. It did not seem to him the most perfect arrangement, but if it met the desires of the people and was capable of being worked by them, that was good enough for the Government. He did not think there would be any difficulty whatever in having a Minister in the House who should be able to respond to Questions, and who would make himself responsible, and be responsible for the Code and the regulations, and be able to exercise as much control over various local authorities as the President of the Board of Education could. He really thought that the Amendments which had been adumbrated by his right hon. friend would be a great improvement. Although he did not say it would be the most workmanlike piece of work the House ever did, he said it would be a good piece of work, and one likely in the future to redound to the cause of good education in Wales.

said that before the right hon. Gentleman spoke there was really some doubt whether or not the functions of the Minister to be appointed would resemble those of the hon. Member for the Elland Division. They did not know whether they were to have a new Minister with great responsibility, or merely one who would be able to answer the necessary questions. They now knew, however, that they were to have a full-fledged Minister with great Parliamentary responsibilities. The second clear deduction from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman was that the Minister must devote his time to Wales, they could not lump him up with any other duties. If the new Ministry for Wales, as he would almost call it, could be undertaken by anybody except a gentleman appointed for that particular purpose, the only Minister would be the right hon. Gentleman himself. They clearly could not lump up Welsh education with shipping and railways, with the Local Government Board, or the Colonial or Foreign Departments. If they were going to keep it in any department, that department must be the Board of Education. But this the right hon. Gentleman had formally repudiated; he had told them that he would not undertake it. It was quite evident that none of his colleagues could, and therefore they must have a separate Minister for Wales. But there was a third point that emerged. Was it not quite obvious that they could not possibly appoint a Minister for Welsh education without having it clearly in their minds that this was the beginning of a Ministry for Wales which would deal with other subjects? There was no case at present in these islands in which there was a separation of the duties of education from the other executive duties. The offices of Minister for Scotland and of Irish Secretary illustrated this. The duties and position of the Scottish Minister were defined in an Act. Was not that the businesslike and constitutional method of procedure? He pointed out that since the Government had not even put their Amendments on the Paper there would be a difficulty in embodying them in the Bill when the guillotine fell at half-past ten. It was a most preposterous method of doing business.

said the position in Wales was that they had absolute control over municipal education, and they also had absolute control of secondary education under the Secondary Board. That was set up by a Conservative Government. All the money spent by that Secondary Board was spent without any control at all. It was now proposed to set up a similar Board to have control of elementary education as the present Board had to-day of secondary education, and that that Board should have the expenditure of the money obtained from the Parliamentary grant for Wales. It was now said that as a concession there should be a Minister set up who should be not only responsible for the money spent on elementary education but also on secondary education. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite set themselves up as constitutionalists. If that was so, why did they not put this matter right in the Intermediate Education Act of 1889? As they had failed to do so the Government had now come to the rescue, and suggested that a Minister should be appointed who should be responsible for all the money spent on elementary as well as on secondary education. The proposals of the Government would legitimise the position of both elementary and secondary education in Wales. This was a concession which surely every constitutional purist should welcome, but instead the Government were not even thanked. Some hon. Gentlemen seemed to think that a constitutional revolution would be created if this new Council were set up. There were many reasons why it should be set up. Elementary education was now controlled by one authority and secondary education by quite another set of people. Part IV. of the Bill sought to co-ordinate the authority so that people who were responsible for the training of pupil teachers should also be responsible for the schools in which pupil teachers were trained. It might be a very small matter, but it was a very important one in the training of teachers. Anyone knew that the training of teachers was one of the most important things they had to do. There were other matters. They had heard from Ministerial Benches a good many objections to one of the clauses discussed yesterday, because it was said that children who should be taken to secondary schools were taken to higher-grade schools and vice versa. There was no doubt that the work of the higher-grade schools did overlap that of the intermediate and secondary schools in Wales as in England. If this Council were set up it would have the control both of the higher-grade schools and of the intermediate schools, and the overlapping would disappear. The President of the Board of Trade had indicated how the assurances which had been given could be carried out in order to meet every legitimate objection that might be raised, or any legitimate suspicion that might exist that this Council would use its powers unreasonably. Wales had been entrusted with its own university colleges, and with the control of its secondary education. The Board of Education used to send inspectors every year to examine the secondary schools in Wales, but he was told that the inspection had now become a triennial inspection, and even that had almost disappeared. They only asked on behalf of Wales that this House should give them the same powers with regard to elementary education as had already been given in regard to higher and secondary education.

^* said he wished to repeat a question put by his right hon. friend to which no answer had been given. The President of the Board of Trade had told the Committee that the Government proposed to move a series of Amendments at a later stage of this clause in order to carry out the views of the Government, and he would ask whether the right hon. Gentleman would put the Amendments on the Paper to-night so that before the Report stage hon. Members would have adequate time to consider them. He would like to say that he was greatly interested in the speech of the President of the Board of Education. It was quite clear that the President of the Board of Education in future would have nothing whatever to do with Wales. The new Minister for the Welsh Education Department would have complete and entire responsibility.

We shall be under the same roof, and I hope we shall get on very well.

^* said it had been already pointed out that the transfer of one department to another in this way had been hitherto considered to require an Act to justify it. Apparently that was not now the view. Why, he did not know, but that precedent like others was blown to the winds. The Council of necessity would have to appoint its own inspectors; and presumably the local education authorities, some of which had already got their inspectors, would in future have a third branch of inspection. He could not help thinking that the new department to be created would complicate matters. So far as it introduced adequate Parliamentary control no doubt it was a great improvement. But he really could not understand why Wales should not be content with the President of the Board of Education. The Solicitor-General had said that Clause 37 was a humble measure of departmental reorganisation. Did that coincide with the views of Welsh representatives? If it was merely the grouping of officials in Wales, who were to be placed in a corner of the building in Whitehall and the responsibility towards Parliament was to remain, he could not understand why Welsh Members were not content that the President of the Board of Education should found his own Welsh department within the great department, and himself be the responsible Minister to this House. The President of the Board of Education, whether the right hon. Member for North Bristol or the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, was far more qualified to represent education in this House for England at large or Wales in particular than any subordinate Minister by whom this work was to be carried on as a sort of extra. The effect of Clause 37 would not do away with the necessity for the Default Act. The difficulties which led to the Default Act in Wales were caused by what had been described as a state of war. No doubt a state of war

had arisen which was very deplorable, but it was always possible owing to some local irritation that a situation of that kind might arise. They had been told that the control of Parliament would be complete, effective and substantial. Under the present Bill hon. Members would remember that the Government continued the Education Default Act with all its mistakes and faults, but when this Bill became law it would be impossible to put the Default Act into operation in Wales, because it only gave power to the Board of Education, which Board would have no control over education in Wales. The Default Act would in future apply to England and it ought therefore to apply also to Wales.

The Default Act only applies to voluntary schools.

^* asked why, if that were the case, it was not proposed to repeal the Act. Having continued that Act for England, and having given a pledge that the control of Parliament over education in Wales would be as complete as the central control over education for England, that ought to be taken into consideration by the Government.

said he did not think this matter could be conveniently dismissed before the debate closed. The Government adhered to their Amendments, and they meant to put them down on the Paper in spite of all discouragement. They could not do that until the Bill was through Committee and the Report stage was reached.

Question put

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 279; Noes, 50. (Division List No. 225).