I beg to present a Petition from Midlothian on behalf of the Scottish Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, praying for increased allowances. I also have similar Petitions from other places.

I desire to present Petitions from Leith and other places, praying that an increase of the allowance of wives and widows from 12s. 6d. to 25s. weekly, with increases for other dependants, should be granted.

I beg to present a similar Petition from Aberdeen and Kirkaldy.

I have further Petitions from Falkirk.

I would call the attention of the hon. Members to the provisions of Standing Order 66, which says that the House will receive no Petition for any sum relating to public service. I am very doubtful whether any of these Petitions are, therefore, in order. It is a matter for the Petitions Committee to consider.

I desire to present further Petitions.

The hon. Member must take his chance with the Petitions Committee.

I beg to present a Petition from the Govan branch of the Scottish Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers praying for an increase of separation allowances.

I would call the hon. Member's attention to Standing Order 66. At the same time, I ask him to bring his Petition to the Table, subject to anything the Petitions Committee may have to say.

May I, Mr. Speaker, present a Petition on the same subject from Ayrshire? It is largely signed.

The hon. Member may bring it up to-morrow. Perhaps he will in the meanwhile consider the effect of the Standing Orders.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a second time."

The new Clause, which stands in my name, refers to an important topic, namely, the question of religious instruction in public schools in Scotland. That is a topic which has caused a good deal of discussion during the recent Recess, and some concern was expressed by the Churches regarding the provision of the Bill as it stands. I was very anxious, if possible, to meet any legitimate apprehensions on the part of the religious community in Scotland in this matter, and accordingly I gave notice that I proposed to move on the Report stage the new Clause which stands first on the paper. I was very glad to find that without any conference with those connected with the Churches in Scotland and the Educational Institute, who had been concerning themselves in the matter, they asked me to put down an Amendment practically in the same terms as that of which I have given notice, and indicated that if that Amendment or new Clause was accepted by the Government, their opposition to the Bill in this regard would be withdrawn. Perhaps it might be convenient that I should read to the House an extract from a letter which I have received from the Secretary of the Education Committee of the Church of Scotland in this matter. He writes me on the 10th October, and I should say that this letter has a bearing upon subsequent new Clauses on the Paper, one in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dumfries Burghs (Mr. Gulland), and one in the name of the hon. Member for Cen- tral Glasgow (Mr. Macleod). Probably they will be satisfied with the concordat which has been arrived at. The Secretary of the Church of Scotland Education Committee writes me that

In the second place, the apprehension was expressed that the Conscience Clause of the Act of 1872 and the Preamble of the Act of 1872 would not be imported into this Bill. I do not regard that as a well-founded apprehension, but, in order that there shall be no doubt whatever about it, I propose by this Clause to re- enact in terms the contents of the Preamble of the Act of 1872, so that the Preamble now becomes a definite Clause in this Bill.

These being the two grounds upon which the Churches were concerned, I hope and believe that their opposition has been entirely met by the Clause which I propose. If the House is satisfied with that explanation, I propose to leave it in the meantime at that. I hope my right hon. Friend opposite, in these circumstances, will not think that it is necessary to move the Clause of which he has given notice. If, contrary to my hope and expectation, he should feel it his duty to do so, it would then be my duty to discuss the question of the mandatory provision which that Clause includes. But inasmuch as the Churches of Scotland are no longer asking for a mandatory provision, and as they were the only persons, so far as I know, who opposed the Bill as it stood in this regard, I am very hopeful that my right hon. Friend will think it proper to withdraw his Amendment. I am most anxious to avoid, if I can, a repetition of the discussions which have taken place during the Recess. I am most anxious to avoid a repetition of these in the interests of time, if nothing else, on the floor of the House, and, accordingly, I feel I shall consult the convenience of the House if, without going into the matter in greater detail at this moment, I ask the House to give this Clause a Second Reading.

Like the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure everyone is anxious to avoid controversy on this Bill as far as possible, and to have the Bill passed at the earliest possible moment. As there is a Clause dealing with the subject in the name of the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. F. Whyte), who, I am sorry, owing to ill-health, is not able to be here to-day, and in the name of myself, of a somewhat different character, I may remind the right hon. Gentleman that that Clause was put down before we rose. There is also the other Clause in the name of the hon. Member for Central Glasgow (Mr. Macleod), which embodies the present views of the education committees of the two Presbyterian Churches. There is no disguising the fact that in Scotland there has been a great deal of uneasiness on this subject, and for that uneasiness the right hon. Gentleman himself is responsible, because of the present Clause 18 in the Bill. I do not want to enter into controversy, but I would remind him that it is the frame work of the Bill itself which has brought up this controversy, and there was a very strong feeling throughout Scotland that religious instruction should be mandatory. I am not going into the question of how many Presbyterians voted for and how many voted against, but he knows, and the right hon. Gentleman sitting on his right (Mr. Macpherson) knows, that there is a very serious feeling in Scotland on behalf of religious instruction. I do not say that anything has been done to show that this is in danger, but I can mention one little point. Since the War, in the schools in Edinburgh, which have been commandeered by the War Office, the one topic for which the time has been cut down has been the time of religious instruction, from thirty minutes to twenty minutes, which shows that, under the stress of Government pressure, such time may be curtailed.

I do not want, however, to bring up these points. I want to deal merely with the new Clause of the right hon. Gentleman. Of course this does not make it mandatory. It does nothing new, but merely puts in the body of an Act what has previously only been in the Preamble, and it is solely and entirely declaratory. I confess that, personally, I prefer the words of the hon. Member for Central Glasgow. The words of the right hon. Gentleman look, again, rather like a Preamble. I suppose there are many precedents for embodying a Preamble in the body of a Bill. So far as I am concerned, I have no intention of moving a Clause. I am quite sure it will not give satisfaction to everybody in Scotland, but I personally, and I am certain many of those for whom I speak, are anxious to avoid controversy, and therefore I am quite ready to accept the Clause moved by the right hon. Gentleman.

I am very glad indeed the Secretary for Scotland has seen fit to propose this new Clause, and I am authorised by the Joint Committee of the Established Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church to say that they accept the Clause as proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. So far as I am personally concerned I shall not propose the Clause that stands in my name. I should like to inform the House that public opinion has been very strongly—almost unanimously—in favour of religious teaching in all the schools. The Act of 1872 was not wholly satisfactory, although it worked up to a certain point. But religious instruction was only referred to in the Preamble, and had not the force of a Clause in the Bill. My desire—and, I know, the desire of a very, very large number—would be to make religious teaching in all schools mandatory, but many were opposed to that, and we were also aware that there was very strong opposition on the part of the teaching profession in Scotland owing to certain suspicions they had. In view of that, the Joint Committee came to the conclusion that it would not be expedient to press for it to be made mandatory, and agreed to accept the Clause as put down by the Secretary for Scotland. I merely want to add that the large Presbyterian majority in Scotland feel that they have very just grounds for the claim, in view of the concessions and privileges which are given to other denominations in Scotland, and therefore I do hope sincerely the House will see fit to accept the Clause proposed by the Secretary for Scotland.

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause read a second time, and added to the Bill.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a second time."

The marginal headings of this and the subsequent Clauses which I have put down give a summary of my proposal, which is to establish not a Scotch Education Department, but a Scottish Educa- tion Department. It deals with the constitution of the Board, the seal, style, Acts, Orders and Rules of the Board, the transfer of officers, and the construction of Acts and deeds, etc. I understand from the Secretary for Scotland that, so far as the form of this new Clause is concerned, it is watertight in its proposals. I moved this in Committee upstairs. Of course, then I had a financial Clause in it which at that time was in order. Obviously on the Report stage I cannot introduce a financial Clause, but the Secretary for Scotland is aware of the Clause in its original form, and he knows perfectly well how this Clause could be made operative at once should it receive the assent of this House. What we are doing in this Bill is practically the creation of an enlarged Education Department for Scotland. This is being done at a time when the Scottish Education Department is still located in London. In these days of self-determination the Scottish people, who are primarily interested in this Bill, and whose concern it chiefly is, are the people who ought to be consulted in regard to the provisions of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland must know, just as he has been acquainted with the religious opinion on the religious Clauses, that there is no single body of public opinion in Scotland but is in favour of this Clause, and that the only opposition to the proposals of the Clause comes from his own Department and his own officials here in London. When we are also near the settlement of new constitutional matters, when, among other things, it is proposed that Scotland shall have a Home Rule Bill, it seems to me folly, when we are passing an Education Bill, that we should not provide at once for the transference of the Scottish Education Department to Edinburgh.

Every other Scottish Department at the moment is located in Edinburgh. There is no Scottish Department except the Education Department, which has its offices in London. The extraordinary inconveniences to local authorities in Scotland of always requiring to come to London in order to transact business which is domestic business is obvious, if not to English, Irish, and Welsh Members, at any rate to Scottish Members. As the latter know, the Lobbies of this House yesterday and to-day have been full of deputations from school boards all over Scotland. While we were in Committee upstairs there were never fewer than a hundred members in attendance from various local and civic authorities in Scotland to watch over the details of the Bill. We who represent Scotland are charged by our constitutents to express the view here that the time is ripe for the transference of the Scottish Education Department to Edinburgh. On the bench opposite are two ex-secretaries for Scotland (Mr. McKinnon Wood and Mr. Tennant). Both these hon. Gentlemen know the strength of public opinion in regard to this demand.

No!

Yes, they do! There are only a few isolated Unionist Members in Scotland who do not know anything at all about public opinion in Scotland, and consequently take a contrary view. The bulk of public opinion in Scotland, as expressed by the school boards and municipalities, and as expressed by, at any rate, three-fourths of the electors, is in favour of having these offices transferred to our own country. I very much hope both of the hon. Gentlemen that I have named will add something to this Debate, bearing out what I have said as to the strength of Scottish public opinion in this matter.

In detail this is a proposal to transfer the Department from London to Edinburgh. It gives powers administratively to make this Educaton Bill a much more valuable instrument than it would be if it were administered from London. There are four branches of education in Scotland all of which are vital to the future interests of our own country—namely, elementary and secondary, continuation classes, and technical education. In the Clause which I am moving power is taken to create someone, or somebody, who will give these branches of Scottish Education their precise and particular attention. It is quite obvious—to repeat a commonplace—that this nation has to prepare itself for what people popularly call the New War—the war to follow after peace is made with the Central Powers. We are all agreed that one of the best instruments for waging that war is the efficient and complete education of the children in our schools. Certain departments of our education have been largely neglected in the past. In Scotland we have done particularly well in elementary and secondary education; not so well in continuation classes, and certainly not nearly so well—with certain notable ex- ceptions in the large towns—in technical education. Technical education is going to mean a very great deal more to the people of Scotland than ever it has meant before. In the West of Scotland we have all the technical engineering occupations associated with what is called the Clyde, Since the War broke out a similar kind of activity has grown up in the East. We have had created at Rosyth very large departments of Government activity; there is growing up around Rosyth and district a new population which has necessitated great new town-planning schemes, of which Dunfermline has been the centre. It is obvious, in both East and West of Scotland, that if the children growing up there are to be adapted to the future needs of Scotland much more attention must be given to technical education. This can be best achieved on the spot if you have special men, specially qualified to give their attention to this very important subject.

The other argument in favour of the transference of this Department to Edinburgh and the creation of the Department I have suggested is the absolute impossibility of the Secretary for Scotland paying adequate attention to the work which is being laid on his shoulders. I do not know whether this House realises what are the functions of the Secretary for Scotland? I do not intend to weary the House by going through them, but I think my right hon. Friend would be the first to admit that the Secretary for Scotland, in his own person and office, has the control in Scotland of many Departments which in England are represented in this House by separate Ministers on the Front Bench. My right hon. Friend has the questions that come under the Local Government Board—agriculture, fisheries, and education. Altogether there are some twelve or thirteen separate Departments, for all of which he is responsible in this House. The Bill we are about to pass throws upon the right hon. Gentleman's shoulders a great many more burdens than were thrown upon him by the existing Statutes under which Scottish education is administered. The majority of those who represent Scotland have come to the conclusion that we must relieve the Secretary for Scotland of a great many of his duties if they are to be attended to properly and efficiently. I do not mean that my right hon. Friend does not do all that one man can be expected to do. I think it only fair to say that so far as his colleagues and public opinion in Scotland are concerned we are amply satisfied with the assiduity with which he attends to his duties, and no Secretary for Scotland has made so great an impression upon the people of Scotland by the way in which he has attended to his duties. I think the right hon. Gentleman himself would be the first to agree that the proposition I am making is true, and if he were relieved of a great many of those duties he would not only have more time to attend to the others, but he would have more leisure for himself. If the majority of the Scottish Members want the proposal, I cannot see how the Geovernment can resist it, and they can only do so by the votes of Members of Parliament who do not represent Scotland. I am certain if a free vote is taken among the Members for Scotland this new Clause would be supported, and I am sure it would be supported by the Secretary for Scotland if he were not sitting on the Treasury Bench, because his recent policy has been all on the lines of Scottish Home Rule. I have listened to many of the right hon. Gentleman's speeches on public platforms in Scotland, and I have cheered him when he has said that the Scottish Education Department should be transferred from London to Edinburgh. Now that the right hon. Gentleman is in the proud position of being in authority I am looking forward to him carrying out the promises he made in those speeches upon many Scottish platforms in those days of less responsibility. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to create a monument to his political memory in Scotland, I suggest that he could not do better than take this first step in the creation of a separate administration of Scottish affairs in Scotland. After all Scottish people know something about education, for they have had a long and honourable tradition. Their public bodies are very advanced and energetic, and it is a thousand pities, when passing a Bill of this kind, that you ought not to take advantage of it in order to set up a Scottish Education Department in Edinburgh which would energise Scottish education.

I am sure that I cannot be accused of any hostility to this Bill for I have always encouraged it, and my greatest desire is to see it as rapidly as possible on the Statute Book, because I think it is the greatest boon you can give to Scotland at this time, and, indeed, it is the only possible way in which you can keep Scotland in the forefront of education. Happily we have got very easily through what promised to be the quicksands and the shoals of a religious controversy. We have, I think, two full days before us in which we can put every point of view and investigate this Bill in the light of the Amendments set out on the Paper. Without in the slightest degree jeopardising the Bill, I think we can go in for making a thoroughly good job of it. The proposition is that the Board of Education should transfer the Scottish Education Department to Scotland, and for the life of me I cannot find a single valid argument against that pro-position. I believe that my right hon. Friend in Grand Committee quite agreed that if we had a Home Rule Bill for Scotland the Education Department would have to go north of the Border. I assume the right hon. Gentleman did not wish to deal with that topic in this Bill because he did not wish to prejudice the Home Rule Bill of the future. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman is quite aware of the extraordinary development of the Home Rule sentiment which has taken place in Scotland since the War began, for it is simply amazing, and it is entirely due to the mismanagement of Scottish affairs in England. I will guarantee that I could get a four to one or a five to one majority for Home Rule in any division of the City of Edinburgh at the present time, and here is an excellent opportunity for my right hon. Friend to demonstrate the sincerity of his convictions with regard to Home Rule. If, however, the right hon. Gentleman may think he ought not to put his opinion into a Bill of this character, let me remind him that ever since the office which he so worthily holds was created in 1885 the trend of legislation has been to locate in Scotland all those Government Departments dealing specially with Scottish affairs, and by accepting this Clause he would be simply conforming to the trend and intention of the legislation which began by the establishment of the Local Government Board Act of 1884. We have a Board of Agriculture and a Commission of National Insurance, and I suppose that shortly we shall have a Ministry of Health. If my right hon. Friend is going to be consistent he must propose that a Ministry of Health for Scotland shall be established in London but I am sure he would not dare to make any such proposition. The Scottish Education Department is a kind of relic of the days when all Scottish affairs were administered as part and parcel of English Departments

"The thing we see is neither rich nor rare,

We wonder how the devil it got there!"

It is the fly in the amber; it is a kind of barnacle which has become attached to Whitehall and has been left high and dry by the tide of national development. If it is necessary that we should have local government, agriculture, national insurance and the Ministry of Health administered in Scotland, why should we not have our education administered there? There is all the greater reason. I say that official convenience is no argument at all. If it were a genuine argument, then all the agencies now established in Scotland should be brought to this side of the border. I am sure that there is no valid argument against the transfer. Probably, we shall not have an Education Bill in this House again—at least I hope not—for the next ten years. It is incumbent upon us therefore to transfer this Department at this, time for the sake of consistency, and, beyond all, for the sake of national efficiency. You are by this Bill very largely extending the operations of national education. My hon. Friend has enumerated the branches. The time for having a one-man management for anything has gone by. Autocracy of that kind is on its last legs everywhere. The time has come when a group of experts with a chairman can deal far better with these many branches of education than any individual man. All of them, especially technical education, need the assistance of men who have devoted a considerable portion of their lives to the study of them. I have the greatest hope that my right hon. Friend will accept this Clause. I am sure, if he refuses, that he will have the greatest possible difficulty in Scotland in explaining why he has not done so.

I should like to have the opportunity of saying a word or two in support of this Clause. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Clause (Mr. Hogge) rested the arguments for it very largely upon opinion in Scotland. In so doing he took absolutely sure ground. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that I believe the vast majority of the people of Scotland would strongly support the proposal that this Department should have its place in Edinburgh, and that the education of Scotland should be administered from the capital of Scotland itself. I shall await with very much interest what is said in answer to that view. During the sittings of the Committee upon this Bill we were inundated with representatives from Scotland who came here at great personal inconvenience. We have therefore had an object lesson of the expense and inconvenience which might be avoided if we had a Board dealing with these matters in Scotland. The suggestion has been made that it is not desirable in the interests of education that such a Clause should be accepted. I read with interest the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman when dealing with this matter in Committee. His main argument was that so long as we have a responsible Minister in London it is convenient and desirable to have the headquarters of the Scottish Education Department also in London. I should like the right hon. Gentleman, in his reply, to indicate what distinction he-draws between the work of the Scottish Education Department and the work of the many Boards to which my hon. Friend has already referred and which is being carried on in Scotland itself. We know perfectly well that under the present system the Secretary for Scotland is very much overburdened with work and that he has to have representatives of these Boards attend in London—no doubt their presence is necessary—to advise him. What distinction can he draw between the case of education and the case of agriculture, or public health, or local government, and so forth? It seems to me very difficult to say. Perhaps we shall have some light from him on this subject when he replies.

Then there is another good reason for this Clause. Under the present system we have references continually made to the Department, and by this new Bill immense authority is naturally being conferred upon the Department. We have been for a considerable time really under the necessity of accepting what I venture to say is somewhat of a mediaeval fiction with regard to the Scottish Education Department. We have asked again and again what it is, and we have been told that it consists of "My Lords," who under a Minute of the Council are appointed from time to time to consider these important matters with regard to Scottish education. We have asked how often these gentlemen meet and discuss together the questions which affect the interests of Scottish education, and we have been led to believe that practically they never meet. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman has been able to unearth some information with regard to one or two meetings which have taken place over a period of years, but, if there is a Department in charge of education in Scotland, we want to know who are the persons who are managing that Department, and what work they are accomplishing in the name of the Department? Reference has been made to the work being carried on by individuals. I want to pay the highest tribute to the Secretary of the Scottish Education Department for his ability and for his courtesy to all Scottish Members who approach him. I do not want for one moment to suggest that he is not in every way an admirable official for the work that he is doing, but surely the Scottish Members of Parliament are not going to rest content with the suggestion that the whole of education in Scotland is to be placed in the hands of one man, however able he may be!

The suggestion which my hon. Friend makes is a very sound one. We should have the best experts meeting together in conference, dealing with these matters, giving expression to the views of the people in Scotland, and in close contact with them, instead of having to bring people to London to discuss matters with officials here. It seems to me that an unanswerable case has been made out. My right hon. Friend may say that this is a matter of immense importance, and will affect the future of the Bill which we are all anxious to see passed into law. I respectfully submit that this is the opportunity to raise this question. We are dealing with Scottish education. We are dealing with a very important matter affecting the welfare of our nation, and those who are prepared to pass by a question of this kind owing to certain difficulties to which it may give rise are not doing fair by their constituents and by those interested in education in Scotland. I earnestly suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that there is a great deal more in this Clause than may appear at first sight. The principle involved is a very big one. If he refuses to accept in any shape or form the suggestion that Scotland deserves special consideration for its own special educational requirements and deserves to have these matters administered in its own capital, then he is laying himself open to a considerable challenge from the Scottish people themselves. While we may be defeated upon this matter, I sincerely trust that we shall not be defeated by Scottish votes, but that we shall be able to appeal to the people of Scotland, and tell them that this matter was not decided by the Scottish Members of the House of Commons, but that we were swamped by the English Members, and that it is a decision which we are not prepared to accept.

4.0 P.M.

I have listened with great care to the interesting speeches which have been made, and I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) for adding to his other Parliamentary gifts with which we are familiar the gift of Parliamentary draftsmanship. He said that I had expressed the view that this was a watertight Clause. That may be so. It has been ertremely well drawn, as a Clause of this kind ought to be. That, however, does not carry one very far with regard to the merits of the argument. I have examined the Clause with great care. It really divides itself into two quite separate proposals, the one having nothing whatever to do with the other. The first proposal which it makes is that there should be a board set up to replace the Secretary for Scotland, who meantime is solely responsible to this House for education in Scotland. The Board is to replace the Secretary for Scotland. The second proposal, which is quite distinct from the first, and really has no bearing upon it, is that the Board shall sit in Edinburgh—that its principal office shall be in Edinburgh. May I, for a moment, examine these two separate proposals and see how they work out? The first proposal is that a Board of four members shall be set up. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend means that the members shall be paid, but, looking back to the terms of the proposal which he set down in Committee, I think that is his intention. If that be so, then he would be increasing the cost of administration very considerably. In my opinion, it would also mean delay in administration, and it would certainly also involve a weakening of ministerial responsibility. On that last ground, I should like to quote a very important recommendation made by the Royal Commission upon the Civil Service which recently sat. It was a very strong Committee, and in the course of their report they say this with regard to Scotland:—

On the second question—the proposal that the offices of the Board should be in Edinburgh—that, as the House knows, and as my Scottish colleagues know, is not a novel suggestion. It has often been debated and has been seriously considered by successive Secretaries for Scotland. It is important to remember that, while the suggestion is that the principal offices should be in Edinburgh, the Board of Education is not unrepresented there to-day. It has offices in Edinburgh with a gentleman in charge who is known to every Scottish Member, and who is held in the highest respect—I refer to Dr. Macdonald—and that office is the connecting link between Scotland and London at the present moment. My view is that so long as you have a Minister for Education in London it is more convenient that you should have the principal office in London also. My hon. Friend has referred to other Boards in Scotland. It is a fact that such Boards do exist in Edinburgh. But does that exempt them from criticism or make them more acceptable in the country? I have my own view about that. I am not reflecting on any Board, but the suggestion that to have the main Board in Edinburgh makes it more acceptable to public opinion or ensures that it should be regarded with more favour is not borne out by experience.

The whole question is: Are we prepared to accept this new Clause for transferring the Board to Edinburgh now? The Bill is drawn from the point of view of existing conditions, and not of conditions which may exist in the future. I take back nothing I have said on the subject of Home Rule. The question is: Are you to put the cart before the horse, as I respectfully suggest the new Clause would do? The question of what conditions we hope may exist in the future is not the issue now before the House. That issue is: Shall we, here and now, transfer this Department from London to Edinburgh at a time when you have not got a Scottish Home Rule Parliament? As far as devolution is concerned, I adhere to everything I have said. This seems to me to be a purely practical question. Is a case made out for doing this now, before you have a Home Rule Parliament set up in Edinburgh? My view is that so long as the Scottish Minister is here it is more convenient—and I think the experience of my predecessor will bear that out—it is more convenient from the point of view of successful administration that you should have the Education Office here, with an office in Edinburgh acting as the connecting link, than that you should now, prematurely as I think, transfer the whole organisation from London to Scotland. While I recognise the value of this Debate, I would ask my hon. Friend not to press this proposal to a Division now. He has made his speech and expressed his views with his usual candour and with entire friendliness to myself. While that is so, I venture to put it to the House most respectfully that however important this may be on its merits for the future, it would be inadvisable at the present moment that the transfer should be proceeded with. I therefore appeal to my hon. Friend not now to press his proposal.

Although it happens that I am, by accident, an English and not a Scottish Member, I am certain the House and my Scottish Friends will not object to my intervening in this Debate, because I cannot dissociate myself from the educational system of Scotland. I will be very brief however in what I have to say, but I think I shall be able to go a little bit more fundamentally into the question than has so far been done. The education of a people affects the life of that people. If the Education Department in Scotland was merely a matter of administration, and if the London section of that Department was merely a matter of convenience, then what my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland has said would be absolutely final. The Education Department should be in London, and its connecting link should be in Edinburgh. But that raises the whole question as to what the nature of the Education Department should be. The history of Scottish education is totally different from that of English education. Anyone who reads the literature of the Scottish Education Department and that of the English Education Department knows that the whole conception of Scottish education has been different from the conception of English education, and that from an educational point of view England is practically an alien country from Scotland. I spent part of my holidays in looking through some of that literature and nothing amazed me more, taking the very earliest stages of Scottish education, at the time of the Reformation, and comparing the educational literature of England covering the same time, than the fundamental difference of conception. From that fundamental difference of conception you have a totally different system evolved.

What you have to-day is the whole spirit of Scottish education being dominated at Whitehall. It is true you have a most efficient and admirable officer in the person of Dr. Macdonald in Edinburgh, but his is an advisory position. The Department and the spirit of Scottish education is across the road here. Its atmosphere is English. The influence which lies about it is English, and if any- one cared to take up the time of the House, which I do not want to do, by going into details of the changes in Scottish education during the last fifteen or twenty years, it could be shown that English influences have been changing fundamentally the conception of Scottish education, and certainly not for the benefit of Scottish education. On the Civil Service Commission, when we were dealing with the question of Scottish education and the need for the Scottish universities to supply efficient candidates for the Indian Civil Service, nothing was more clear to us than the extraordinary changes for the worse which had taken place in certain sections of Scottish education. You cannot create a little island at Dover House which is not influenced by the policy pursued inside and outside Dover House. Nobody will dispute this, that if the Scottish education policy was determined in Edinburgh under Scottish influence and in a Scottish atmosphere, the Scottish educational system would be developed in accordance with its own line and traditions and that it would not be something of the nature of engrafting English traditions on the original Scottish stock. That is what is happening to-day, and until the Scottish Education Department is removed to Edinburgh, with an office with Dr. Macdonald to preside over it in London, with the system and policy determined in Edinburgh but with a connecting link in London, the Scottish educational system will not develop on its own lines. But if you make that transfer we shall be able to keep our heads high in the eyes of the world as we have hitherto done. I hope my hon. Friend will carry his proposal to a Division. If he does, I shall support him, because I am in favour of the life of Scotland being developed upon Scottish lines, and this cannot be done if Scottish education is to be governed by the Department in London and not in Edinburgh.

I desire to express my regret at the attitude which the Secretary for Scotland has taken up on this question of transferring the Education Department from London to Edinburgh. It is only another instance of the different note that is struck by Members of this House when they reach the Front Bench as compared with the note they strike when they had not the honour of sitting on that bench. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) has pointed out, this was one of the strongest questions calling for Home Rule for Scotland and it was one of the doctrines which was assiduously preached by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland until he reached the Front Bench. The right hon. Gentleman has advanced one or two points which will not stand investigation. He has talked of expense, and said that before my hon. Friend pro-poses his new Clause he should ask himself the question whether it would cost the country more money. But I would point out that those who at present engaged on Scottish education, one of whom has been mentioned in this Debate, are at present taking more pay, and this question of expense is altogether illusory. It is said that the responsibility of the Minister would be affected if this Department were transferred to Scotland. But the House must realise that there are fourteen Departments over which the right hon. Gentleman already presides, and the offices of thirteen of these Departments are in Scotland. It is only the fourteenth, namely, the Education Board, that has its head office in London. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, what about the Ministerial responsibility of those thirteen offices. Has he less responsibility for them than for education? He cannot for a moment say he has. Therefore the argument about responsibility is absurd. The right hon. Gentleman further tells us that it would be neither suitable nor convenient to bring about this change. He remembers his former speeches, and he cannot object to the principle of Home Rule which underlies this Clause, but he tells us, "Not now; later on; some other day." He fails to remember that the Government of which he is an ornament and a light came into power on the maxim of "Do it now"; and, to come to concrete fact, my right hon. Friend fails to carry out what in an earlier day, politically, he felt it to be his duty to carry out. But we all know the reason why this fourteenth Department is not transferred to Scotland. There is at the head of the Department one who has no desire to live in Scotland, and he has unfortunately got the ear of my right hon. Friend, and, that difficulty existing, we are told that the time is not suitable for this proposal, and in this way Scotland is deprived of a measure of Home Rule now demanded. I think that hon. Members from Ireland realise that this is a demand for Home Rule for Scotland, and I hope that they and the great majority of Scottish Members will support this proposal. It will be interesting to see in the Division Lobby—because my hon. Friend is determined to go to a Division—what Scottish Members are thorough for the Government and what Scottish Members are thorough for Scotland.

I suppose I must apologise for intervening in this Scottish Debate, but I desire to say that the Mover of this Clause will undoubtedly have the support of Irish Members. At the same time, in making that statement, I wish to utter a word of warning to my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh on the whole question, because we in Ireland know something of what is meant by administration through Boards in that country. The system of administration by a Board has been more disastrous to education in Ireland than perhaps anywhere else. Our system of education in Ireland, in consequence of this administration by a Board, has been bad, and I endorse the words of the hon. Member for Leicester in regard to the administration of Scottish education in London. I submit that it is an outrage on any nationality to have these matters administered from a far-distant capital. That is all the more the case when we recognise that of the four nationalities of the United Kingdom, Scotland, above all the others, has had a system of education far ahead of that of England or Wales, and, I regret to say, of Ireland also. That Scottish education should be administered in an English atmosphere in London is nothing short of an outrage. I do not know myself much about Scottish education, but I have not the least doubt, after what the hon. Member for Leicester has said, that this influence is a very unfortunate one. Apart front these considerations, however, I promise the support of the Irish party to the hon. Member for East Edinburgh in the Division Lobby. But I would again warn him against the substitution of a Board for ministerial responsibility. During the thirty years I have been a Member of this House my idea has been to get rid of the Board of Education in Ireland. In Ireland we have about fourteen irresponsible Boards, that are the curse of that country, and, above all, are the curse and the destroyers of education. I am in favour of direct responsibility of representatives to the people in educational matters; therefore, while I strongly support the Home Rule aspect of the question, I am strongly of opinion that the chief offices of the Scottish administration of education ought to be in Edinburgh; it should be administered in a Scottish atmosphere, and in accordance with the great traditions of Scottish education. If the hon. Member for East Edinburgh succeeded in carrying the Clause, the Bill might be modified hereafter so as to secure the principle of Ministerial responsibility on which the Scottish Secretary, a skilled and practical lawyer, has dwelt. The Secretary for Scotland pointed out that the hon. Member's proposal would destroy Ministerial responsibility, but I trust that the hon. Member for East Edinburgh will be able to find some method of preserving responsibility whilst securing a Scottish atmosphere for the administration of education in Scotland.

The hon. Member who has just spoken has answered the whole question and situation. We had this matter discussed in Committee, and I believe that all of us heartily agree with the hon. Member for East Edinburgh as to the fundamental principle of Home Rule, and we in Scotland have not enjoyed that principle in its real form. The hon. Member for East Edinburgh, however, is now making a proposal for which we must all recognise that there is not now in Scotland the machinery necessary to put it into operation. I think it would be far better to wait until Home Rule is carried, and then we could have in Scotland a system of education which would be a model. I am, therefore, opposed to our Friends insisting just now upon the carrying of this Clause, and I would ask them, as the Secretary for Scotland has asked them, that it should be withdrawn. In a few years we shall have Home Rule carried for Scotland, and then we can have a system of education such as is desired administered from Edinburgh.

I have listened to the Debate, and I do not think that some of the speeches represent the general view of Scotland. The speech of the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon) in support of this Clause was the very strongest answer against the course which is now proposed to be taken, and with a very large part of the argument that he used I agree. The hon. Member pointed out the difficulties with regard to education in Ireland under the administration of a Board, and I myself know that there is little to be said in favour of a Board of Education; it is evasive of responsibility, leads to intrigues, and impedes thoroughness and efficiency of administration. We have become accustomed to establishing new Department after new Department and calling them Boards. I remember on one occasion being in the House of Lords, when the late Duke of Devonshire was at the head of the Education Department. He was asked why it should be called a Board of Education, and he replied that be did not know, and that, looking at the draft of the Bill, he could not give the reason why it was called a Board. We have still preserved the name Department, but we have root found it absolutely crippled. We all know that in establishing new Departments with the name of Board—Board of Trade, Board of Local Government, Board of Education—it does not mean a Board. It means one President who is at the head and is responsible. If you really mean to try to administer education, or anything else, by a number of people sitting round a table arguing with one another and throwing responsibility across the table, you will never get anything done. When the Pensions Bill was first before the House I said the plan of having a Pensions Commission seemed to me the very worst which could possibly be adopted. It may have been because of my opposition, or for some other reason, but I was asked to take a place upon that Commission, and I sat on it for some two years. All our operations only proved the truth of what I said, that a Commission was absolutely hopeless, and at the end of some eighteen months, in spite of what we did to try to get something practical done, as we could have done in the old days in the Education Department, we found we were not one step further, and the consequence was that a Minister of Pensions had to be established, as most of us prophesied would be the case, in place of the absurd scheme of trying to administer pensions by a Board. Does the hon. Member (Mr. Macdonald) think that because we happen to live within the sound of Bow Bells we must necessarily have forgotten all our Scottish tradition, be dead to all feelings of Scottish patriotism, and be unable to remember the peculiarities of Scottish education? Does he really think that I have no knowledge of Scotland, that I have no experience of her schools and know nothing about her universities, and that I have ceased to be a Scotsman? If there is any place in this city where strong Scottish patriotic feelings and intimate knowledge of Scottish ideas prevail it is among those who at Dover House are at present connected with the administration of Scottish education.

Oh!

I know they do not rise to the height of patriotism of hon. Members behind me, but patriotism is perhaps not less appreciated in Scotland, and when we hear that the whole trust of Scotland would be implicitly and without question placed in a Board that happened to be situated in Edinburgh I would ask hon. Members if they have forgotten history. We once had a Board of Education in Edinburgh, and when its limited functions were inherited by the Scotch Education Department we had a good deal of quarrelling and a good deal of entanglement to clear up before we got the administration in order. I do not know of any Board in Scotland that succeeded in stirring up more controversy than that old Board which ended in 1878. During the six years that it existed its course of action was not altogether popular in Scotland. There are other parts of Scotland than Edinburgh. I have the greatest admiration for the capital of Scotland, but do you think Glasgow, with a very much larger population and with an enormously larger number of schools, would like to have its affairs entirely dealt with by a Board sitting in Edinburgh? There is nothing that Glasgow dislikes more than a Board in Edinburgh, and Glasgow will go a considerable way in predominating in a question of this sort. It is just as easy for Glasgow to communicate by post with Dover House as it would be with an office in Edinburgh. I am perfectly sure if you go further North into the Highlands they would sooner deal with a Board in close contact with the Government of this country in London than with a Board situated in Edinburgh, having after all to report all its decisions to the central Government here. Will hon. Members only consider how things are worked practically? This Education Departmnet differs from all the other Departments which have been mentioned in Scotland in that it is the great spending Department in Scotland. It is absolutely necessary in order to preserve the balance in regard to that spending and to have its voice properly heard to be in immediate touch with any movement that is going on at the centre, to be within range and in immediate contact with the Treasury.

How does the Irish Department get on?

There is a Department in London.

It has nothing to do with education administration.

No, because you have an Education Department under the Board the irresponsibility of which to Parliament has been repeatedly asserted and admitted by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. That is just what we do not want to have, and you will never have any Board under responsibility to this House of Commons unless it is in immediate contact with Ministers sitting in this House.

It is always rather a doubtful policy to refer to the permanent officers of a Department. They are not here to answer for themselves. Fulsome compliments do not do very much good when you are constantly nagging at the actual work done. But no secretary of a Department is able to exercise his own arbitrary rule for one moment, or, unless he were a fool, would try to exercise it. He knows that at each step he must carry with him the political leader who is his responsible chief. He knows, of course, that his chief cannot go into all the details, and a great deal of detail will be left to the discretion of the permanent officer. But to say that the permanent officer will move one step without being certain that he can give an explanation which is absolutely congenial and satisfactory to his political chief is to talk absolute nonsense. No permanent head of a Department could carry on his work for a month if he were even to seek in the remotest way to act upon a policy of his own in which he was not certain that he had the sympathy of his chief, and that he was carrying out what he knew to be the desire of his chief. Whatever hon. Members' opinions may be as to Scottish Home Rule, they will not improve the efficiency of the Department or secure the sympathy of the Department with Scottish ideas by any flimsy change of this sort, calling a Department a Board and making it consist of three or four instead of one man. No miraculous change will be brought about by the change of locale of the Department from Dover House to some house in North Britain. The officials at Dover House are familiar with Scottish conditions, and I am certain the work will not he in the least helped by a change of territorial position.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has brought to bear upon this question a long experience of Scottish educational administration, and that long experience entitles him to be heard upon this practical administrative question by this House with all respect. But at the same time in listening to his speech one felt that the arguments which he put before the House were more prompted by predeliction for his own old office than by real consideration of administrative efficiency or of the educational interests of Scotland. My right hon. Friend in the latter half of his speech deprecated attacks and criticisms upon permanent officials, and I entirely sympathise with that view. Discussion of the proposal now before the House raises none of those questions. The individual character and the tendencies either of the present occupant of the office and Secretary of the Department or of his distinguished predecessor do not affect that consideration at all. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of the impossibility of autocracy being exercised by any such official. That, of course, depends upon the respective force of the personality of the permanent secretary and of his political chief. In some cases where there is a weak political chief and a strong permanent secretary undoubtedly it is possible for the permanent secretary to create something in the nature of an autocracy; but whether that has happened at the present time or at any time in the past, it is perfectly irrelevant to the question we are discussing, and it might equally arise if you had a board in Edinburgh as well as if the existing arrangements were continued.

The only defence, so far as I can gather, which the right hon. Gentleman has put up is based upon two grounds. First of all, the importance of keeping the education Department in close contact with the Secretary for Scotland in London. The second ground was the necessity of having this Department, which is the largest spending Department in connection with Scotland, located in London on account of financial responsibility. Undoubtedly, it is for the convenience of the Minister, whoever he may be, to have the Department in London, as I believe it would be to his personal convenience if other Scottish departments had their headquarters in London. There is a greater ease of communication between the political chief and the heads of his Departments in those circumstances, but the convenience of the political chief is not the sole matter to be considered. It seems to me that a far more important consideration than that is that there should be close contact between the Departments and the people of Scotland. I believe that the location of the Department in Edinburgh would make for closer contact, better knowledge, and greater sympathy. It is an interesting fact which I think we should take note of, that since the establishment of the office of Secretary for Scotland not a single Department has been established whose headquarters is in London. In every other case the headquarters of the Department has been established in Edinburgh. I think this circumstance can only be explained because of the force of the considerations which I have just put to the House.

My right hon. Friend said that this was a great spending Department. There is a very recent precedent in regard to a great spending Department, certainly a Department which handles and is responsible for very great sums of money. When the National Insurance Act was passed the Scottsh Commission was established with its headquarters in Edinburgh, and I think that most people who are familiar with the working of the Scottish Insurance Commission will bear me out when I say that the separate existence of that Commission in Scotland has been of the utmost advantage to the efficient administration of that great scheme in Scotland. You have had contact with local conditions and a knowledge of those conditions which would have been quite impossible in a centralised Department working only in London, no matter how close the contact thereby secured with the ministerial chief of the Department. I think, therefore, that these considerations justify on practical grounds the proposal which has been put before the House by my hon. Friend, and are in my opinion much stronger than any considerations which have been advanced by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down.

When I come to some of the other arguments of the right hon. Gentleman, it struck me that the only explanation which could be put forward to justify his addressing them to the House is the flimsiness of the case he had to state. He referred to the unhappy existence of a former Board. He is familiar with all the circumstances connected with that Board, but he cannot represent those circumstances as analogous to the proposal now before the House. That was a Board existing in Edinburgh which had to some extent jurisdiction along with the Scottish Education Department. It consequently constituted a kind of system of dual control which was bound to lead to friction, and which inevitably had to end in the extinction of one Department or the other. It happened that the local board, for some reason or the other, went to the wall—probably because my right hon. Friend, the former Secretary to the Scottish Education Department, was such a strong personality as he is. It does not seem to me that that unhappy experience has any relevance to the proposal this House is now considering.

We have also had the oft-repeated tale about the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It has been said that Glasgow, with its huge population and immense commercial interests would never submit to having its educational affairs administered from the more modest city which has the honour to be the metropolis of Scotland. I am, in a sense, a Glasgow representative, though a Lanarkshire Member, and I think I can speak for some of the other representatives of Glasgow upon this point and say that whatever may be the emulation which exists between the two cities the rivalry between them would never stand in the way of the establishment of a national department for any part of our administration in the ancient capital of Scotland. Every one of the Members of Glasgow, or at any rate the majority of the Members for Glasgow, have at one time or another committed themselves in favour of Home Rule for Scotland, and there has never been a proposition put forward for Home Rule for Scotland that did not contemplate the establishment of a national Legislature and Administration in the ancient capital of the country. It seems to me, therefore, futile to suggest that any rivalry, real or imaginary, beween Glasgow and Edinburgh, would stand in the way of the efficient administration of a Board of Education established in Edinburgh.

My right hon. Friend was constantly referring to the advantage of having an impartial Department in London as if it were impossible to obtain an impartial Board in Edinburgh, and as if there were something in the atmosphere or condition of Edinburgh which was fatal to the existence of the virtue of impartiality. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Department of Education as it exists in London has not been impartial—that is not our quarrel with the existing system—but it is entirely irrelevant to say that its removal to Edinburgh would in any degree derogate from its impartiality. After all, our great judicial system in Scotland has its centre in Edinburgh, and no one could suggest that the atmosphere of Parliament House has at any time been fatal to the exercise of judicial impartiality. I think I have dealt with practically all the considerations which the right hon. Gentleman put before the House. Some of those considerations are quite irrelevant to the respective merits of the location of the Board in Edinburgh or in London. In so far as he has dealt with the question of administrative convenience from the point of view of the responsible Minister there is a case for remedy, but in the larger case, the interests of Scotland and the bringing to bear of local knowledge and local opinion upon the Department, the whole balance of the argument is in favour of the proposal contained in the new Clause of my hon. Friend. I therefore hope that the House will agree to accept that proposal not only as a measure of educational and administrative efficiency, but as a concession to the national sentiments of Scotland.

Of the two points contained in this Amendment, the first one, dealing with the Board, I think has been effectively disposed of by the hon. Member for East Mayo and my right hon. Friend. I do not propose to deal with that. What we want is ministerial responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh, the Mover of this Amendment, will not deny that that is what he desires. I honestly think that his proposal would be detrimental to ministerial responsibility. I have only risen because my hon. Friends have made an appeal to me as one who was formerly one of their lordships—the only time I ever was a lord. Then it was my duty to stand up for the Department of Education as it exists in London. I have not altered my views. Therefore I thought it was only proper that I should say what I am going to say, and what I have said before, that this really is not a question of principle at all. It is a question of pure convenience. I disagree with those who think that we do not get the Scottish atmosphere by administration at Dover House. I think you do. I think the proof of it, as the hon. Member for East Mayo has said, is that we in Scotland have been enormously ahead of other nationalities in the British Empire in the matter of education. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say in one breath that you have in your mind an unfortunate influence from Dover House and at the same time say, as you do say, that the Scottish system of education has been admirable.

Surely it is not Dover House that has brought that about!

5.0 P.M.

I do not think that my hon. Friend will go quite so far as to say that the whole position of Scottish education was achieved before anything was done at Dover House, but there it is. You have had a marriage between a Department in Edinburgh and one in London, and the result has been astonishingly good. I hope that my hon. Friend will think that that is so.

Will you contest Berwickshire?

I have sat for Berwickshire now for a quarter of a century, and the number of times I have been approached as to the location of the Education Department as between London and Edinburgh I can count on the fingers of one hand. I do not believe that there is any such strong desire for a change in the location of the Department as my hon. Friend thinks.

You do not care about the sentiment of the Scottish people.

I do care as much about the sentiment of the Scottish people as any Member in this House. I am most anxious to maintain Scottish sentiment, but this is not merely a matter of sentiment; it is a matter of convenience, convenience to the Minister, to the Members of this House. I would like to know how my hon. Friends would feel if every time they wanted to make representations to the Education Department they had either to write to Edinburgh or go to Edinburgh from London. Inasmuch as we have not yet got Home Rule, though I am in favour of Home Rule for Scotland, I cannot help thinking, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland also thinks, that to put such an Amendment as this into the Bill would be to put the cart before the horse.

I would like to give an opinion from the far North-neither from Edinburgh nor from Glasgow. I am not aware of any great rivalry between them, but I appeal to my hon. Friends behind me to look at this in a common-sense way. When you have got Home Rule, as I have always said you must have, all your Departments must be where you have got the Parliament. That goes without saying. But, unfortunately, in the two cases in which you have moved the Department you have put the cart before the horse and appointed an executive in Edinburgh while Parliament sits here, and in both cases there has been a failure. We have a Board of Agriculture from which we cannot get any information about anything. It is the same with the Local Government Board. It is all very well for my hon. Friend, who represents Edinburgh, to go to the offices in Edinburgh and get what he wants, or as much as he can, but it is a different thing for me in far off Aberdeenshire. It is just as easy for me to come to London. It is all done by correspondence. Here you have got the officers. I am entirely with sympathy with the demand for Home Rule, but until we have got Home Rule the Government is here and I want to be in touch with the officers and with the Department, and I am in touch with it here and can get my answer within twenty-four hours, but if the Department is in Edinburgh I have to go to the Secretary for Scotland, and he has got to communicate with Edinburgh, and they take their time over it in Edinburgh, and probably by the time a letter comes back we have forgotten all about it. That is not the way to do business. Where you have got the head of the Government there you ought to have the body, and there you ought to be able to settle things straight away. The Department should be within easy access from this House, and you should have your responsible Minister here while you have your Parliament here. To have the offices at Edinburgh or Glasgow is to do what is not practicable and not common sense. I am perfectly certain that my right hon. Friend from the North of Scotland (Sir A. Williamson) will back me up. So long as you have not got Home Rule, so long as you have got the Imperial Parliament here, I shall oppose the transfer of any more of the Departments from London to Edinburgh.

The North of Scotland has been appealed to by the last speaker, and I can only say in answer to his observations that so far as I am able to judge the opinion of my Constituents, they are strongly in favour of the Education Department being in Scotland, and I think that that opinion is held not only by those who are described as Home Rulers, but by many who would not be so described. They think it a great advantage to be able to have personal contact with the Department in Edinburgh. They go frequently to Edinburgh. They do not go nearly so frequently to London. The journey to Edinburgh is much shorter. Naturally Edinburgh attracts them for various reasons, and owing to business reasons, and they go there much more often than to London. I do think that many difficulties would be removed and misunderstandings would be allayed if they could come into personal contact with the Department. Furthermore, they think that there is something in the Scottish atmosphere, and they believe that if the Departments were in Edinburgh they would get matters connected with education viewed more entirely from the Scottish standpoint. Whether it is right or wrong, I think that that is the opinion which is held in my Constituency. Therefore I am going to support the Amendment. I do not hold personally with all its words. I do not like the idea of any lessening of Ministerial responsibility, which it is suggested would be brought about, but I am supporting the general principle that the Scottish Education Department should be in Scotland and not in London. But while I do not hold with all the words of the Amendment, I do say that in supporting it I am interpreting generally what I believe to be the wishes of my Constituents, and what I also believe to be in consonance with common sense.

In view of the speech made by the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen University (Sir H. Craik), who said that this Amendment was an attack upon officials, may I say that in support- ing this Amendment I have not the slightest idea that I am attacking any official whatever. Speaking for myself, I have made it a rule always to go to Departments, more particularly the Education Department, and I have received there nothing but courtesy, and I have always got what I wanted, or if I did not get what I asked for it has been proved to me that what I asked for was unreasonable. Therefore as far as officials are concerned I have no complaint whatever to make. But this I can say, that there is growing discontent all over Scotland at the way in which things are kept in Departments here in London, and if this Department were removed to Edinburgh, I believe that it would be very acceptable to the Scottish people. My point is this: when you take the executive to the people you have to deal with there is an atmosphere created by the very fact of its being there, and there is the feeling that grievances will be more readily listened to. My hon. Friend (Mr. Henderson) said that it was as easy for him to go to London as to Edinburgh. Yes, because he does not pay anything! He has got a free pass. Then, being a railway director, he wants us to spend all the money we can on railway fares. So I rule out my hon. Friend entirely in this matter. Not only that, but the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen University said that it was quite as easy to go to London as to Edinburgh. That is not so. You can go there and back in the same day.

People would rather go to London than to Edinburgh.

I believe that if you do this it will Rave a very marked effect upon education in Scotland. In days gone by Scotland was a long way ahead of England, Ireland and Wales in the matter of education, and I say with great regret that it has not now the same lead as it used to have. In Wales, for instance, the way in which education is dovetailed from the lower into the higher is in advance of Scotland. My belief is that if this Department had been in Edinburgh it would have kept our education system vastly more in touch with the wishes of the Scottish people. Scotland has not got to-day the lead which it had, but if you remove this Department from London you will do something to encourage the prospect of education in Scotland.

I think it right to say a few words on this subject, because I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland. I think that a great many of the arguments which have been put forward, attractive as they are from the point of view of national sentiment, are a little deficient in practical experience. I have experience of Departments in London and of a Department in Scotland. It has been pointed out by some of my hon. Friends that the new Departments have all been settled in Edinburgh; but what has happened? We started the Board of Agriculture entirely in Edinburgh, but, after some years' experience of that Board, I was driven to the conclusion that the arrangement was extremely unsatisfactory, and if it had not been for the War I certainly would have made a new arrangement. My successors found it absolutely necessary to make a new arrangement, and one of the members of the Board has been brought to London to be permanently resident here. I think that a matter which is overlooked is this. We are all agreed that if we had Home Rule we should have our Boards in Edinburgh. This Motion does not help one towards Home Rule. A sincere friend of Home Rule I think should vote against this Motion. At least, that is my opinion. As a sincere friend of Home Rule, I shall vote against it. Who are the people concerned? There is the Minister responsible to the House of Commons. My hon. Friend and I think it ought to be to a Scottish House of Commons. I should like to see Scottish education entirely under Scottish control, but the Amendment of my hon. Friend will not secure that result. As long as we have the present system the person responsible to Scottish Members is the Secretary for Scotland. Who are the next lot of people interested? The representatives of Scotland. Surely no one would deny that when any educational difficulty arises the natural course of an educational authority or anybody interested in the subject is to apply through his Member either to obtain information or to represent his views to the authority responsible! Now it is not only a question of the convenience of the Secretary of Scotland; it is a question of the convenience of the Scottish Members in at least an equal degree, and the real point is this: How can you make the machine work satisfactorily? I was unable to follow the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Elgin and Nairn (Sir A. Williamson) when he said he supported this Amendment, but entirely disagreed with the major proposition of the Amendment. Because what is the major proposition of this Amendment, after all? As my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland pointed out, it is a very serious proposition. It is that you take the control of Scottish education out of the Scottish Secretary responsible to Parliament and put it practically in the hands of a Board who may be responsible to nobody.

The President is a Member of Parliament.

It does not say so. It says he may be a Member of Parliament, but he is not required to be.

That is the usual phraseology.

I entirely disagree with the tendency that has grown up to sever the Executive from Parliament. I am extremely astonished at my hon. Friend.

It does not do it.

My hon. Friend does not understand his own Amendment.

I do, but you cannot.

What is the point? Everybody is agreed that the right solution—or far more people are agreed than were five years ago—is Home Rule for Scotland, complete Scottish control of education. Do you get more satisfactory provision by setting up a Board on the model of the Local Government Board in Edinburgh divorced from the responsible Minister, and so relieved from the control of Members who represent Scotland? Because that is really the essence of the objection to this Amendment. I think my hon. Friends would have been better advised to concentrate their efforts to get Scottish Home Rule, and not to try to manage Departments in such a way that neither the Minister nor the Members have effective control.

Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."

The House divided: Ayes, 92; Noes, 155.

That disposes of the following Amendment. That standing in the name of the hon. Member for Mid-Lanark (Mr. Whitehouse) is not in order, because it imposes an extra charge.

May I respectfully call your attention, Sir, to the fact that a similar Clause was moved in the Report stage of the English Education Act, and the Speaker held, when the point of Order was raised, that it did not impose a charge on the public necessarily, because it would be quite easy to avoid any increased public charge being caused by equalising the salaries of men and women teachers? I ask you, therefore, Sir, after that explanation, to allow me to move my Amendment.

I have no recollection of what took place on the occasion to which the hon. Member refers, but I have no doubt at all that this Clause as it stands is out of order, and therefore I cannot alter my decision. The same ruling applies to the Clause—[ Expenditure ]—in the name of the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Adamson), and also to the Clause—[ Religious Instruction ]—standing in the name of the hon. Member for the Central Division of Glasgow (Mr. Macleod).

CLAUSE 1.—(Education Authorities.)

A local authority for the purposes of education (in this Act called the "education authority") shall be elected in and for each of the following areas (in this Act called "education areas"), that is to say, in and for—

( a ) each of the burghs mentioned in the First Schedule to this Act (in this Act called the "schedule burghs"); and

( b ) every county, including every burgh situated therein not being one of the scheduled burghs.

I beg to move, to leave out Sub-sections ( a ) and ( b ), and to insert instead thereof the words "Every county and every county of a city."

The effect of this would be that the cities having educational Boards themselves would be limited to four in Scotland—namely, to the four which are counties of cities. The further effect which I desire to arrive at by my Amendment is to exclude Leith from the privileges which are given by this provision. How the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill included Leith amongst the towns with separate authorities nobody understands or knows. Leith has no-claim whatever to be put on a higher pedestal than other towns in Scotland which I could name, such as Greenock and Paisley, which have greater populations and whose school boards have already provided an education even more efficient than that which Leith can claim. This Amendment was proposed in Committee upstairs, and the reply of the right hon. Gentleman was that the exclusion of Leith from this provision would lead to difficulties of administration, because Leith is so interlocked with Edinburgh, and because it is so situated that it is cut off from the county of Midlothian into which it would otherwise fall. That argument will not hold water, because there are districts in Lanarkshire which are already in the same way cut off by Glasgow from the shires into which they would fall, and those districts are not treated as Leith is treated under this Bill. I desire to have some reasonable explanation as to why Leith should be favoured in this way. Has it been the case that the hon. Member for Leith has got the favourable consideration of the Secretary for Scotland, or that that hon. Member has moved the Lord Advocate and that the Lord Advocate has moved the right hon. Gentleman? Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how it is that Leith has received this favoured treatment?

I beg to second the Amendment, which I think makes for the symmetry of the whole scheme of the Bill. The underlying principle of the Bill is that we should have larger areas for educational purposes, and that for the greater part of the country the county should be taken as the educational unit. Certain exceptions are made in the first Schedule of the Bill, and in every case but one those exceptions are made in respect of cities of large populations, so large indeed that they have been in each case dignified as a county of a city. That is a fair test. But Leith, with a smaller population than a number of other Scottish towns, has received differential treatment from those other towns It seems to me that that exceptional treatment is an excrescence and an anomaly on the Bill, and I hope that in the interests of uniformity, so dear to the heart of the right hon. Gentleman, that he will accept this proposal.

I regret very much that I cannot possibly accept the Amendment which has been moved in such persuasive terms. Leith occupies quite a unique position, which bears no resemblance whatever to the cases of Greenock or Paisley, to which allusion has been made. There were two possibilities which I had to consider. May I say parenthetically that none of those influences, malign or otherwise, to which reference has been made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for the College Division (Mr. Watt) were brought to bear on me at any time or in any way. When I had to consider this problem I had to consider the propriety cither of uniting Leith with the county of Midlothian or with the city of Edinburgh. Those were the two alternatives. With regard to the proposal to unite Leith to the county of Midlothian, it would seem to be conclusive against that proposal that Leith is cut off geographically almost entirely from the county of Midlothian by Edinburgh.

Entirely.

Cut off entirely from the rest of Midlothian. I know of no analogous case in Lanarkshire or elsewhere. That seemed to me to rule out the possibility of making Leith part of Midlothian. The other alternative was that Leith should be united to the city of Edinburgh. But union with the city of Edinburgh was, I thought, inappropriate in an Education Bill for educational purposes solely, so long as these two cities were separated for other purposes. It seemed to me, if that were to be done for educational purposes it should be done voluntarily, and I saw no possibility of that being brought about. It appeared to me to be improper therefore to combine Leith as an unwilling partner with the city of Edinburgh. Those two alternatives being out of the way the only remaining question was whether Leith should be included in the schedule. That I thought was quite a reasonable proposition and really almost an inevitable result under the circumstances. An attempt was made in Committee upstairs to exclude Leith, but speaking from recollection I do not think the matter was pressed very hard. I would ask my hon. and learned Friend to refrain from pressing it on this occasion and to be satisfied with the explanation which I have given.

In those circumstances I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

CLAUSE 2.—(Electoral Division.)

For the purpose of such elections, the Secretary for Scotland shall, as soon as may be after the passing of this Act, by order divide each education area into electoral divisions, and in determining the boundaries thereof, he shall have-regard, so far as may be, to the boundaries of wards in scheduled burghs, and districts, burghs and parishes in counties.

I have given notice of an Amendment, to add at the end the words "but shall submit such divisions before they are finally approved to Parliament," but, as I understand the Secretary for Scotland is moving an Amendment of his own which covers the point, I do not propose to move.

I beg to move, at the end, to insert the words:

(2) Before making an Order under this Section the Secretary for Scotland shall cause the proposed Order to be published in such manner as to make the same known to all persons interested, and shall, after considering any objections and representations respecting the proposed Order, and causing a local inquiry to be held if he sees fit to do so, thereafter make the Order and cause the same to be forthwith published in the "Edinburgh Gazette" and in a newspaper circulating in the education area.

I move this Amendment in order to meet the objection which was taken in Committee upstairs on this point. It was there suggested that it would be reasonable that the Order joining districts should be published, in order that objections, if any, might be urged. On consideration it seemed to me that my hon. and learned Friend's proposal was a reasonable one, and accordingly I have met it by putting down this Amendment. I am obliged to the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) for recognising that in substance my Amendment covers the point which he has in mind.

I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, after the word "this" ["under this Section"], to insert the words "and the following."

I think the right hon. Gentleman has acted very wisely in proposing this Amendment, because it does give local opinion the opportunity of saying whether proposed electoral divisions are suitable or not. My Amendment to his proposed Amendment is with the object of carrying the Clause a little further. He says,

I have an Amendment on the Paper which was put down with the same intention of getting an explanation from the Secretary for Scotland as to what is meant by the following Clause. If we took the discussion of that point on this Amendment we could save the discussion of my Amendment later on. The point I want to get at is that in the following Section you deal with the number of members to be elected to each education authority in an apportionment among the electoral divisions. At the moment that is left entirely in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland, who has himself objected very strongly on more occasions than one to this kind of autocratic and bureaucratic power. This Clause gives the Secretary for Scotland much more power than I think the people of Scotland want to see him endowed with, and probably a great deal more power than he would like to assume himself; and I should like to know what kind of relations are the new numbers of the local education authorities to bear to the number of existing members of the school boards, and by what rule is the Secretary for Scotland going to determine whether Edinburgh shall have so many members as against Glasgow or any other part of Scotland, or the ratio between county and burgh? I hope my right hon. Friend will let us understand that while this is in the Bill he is not assuming a power which is quite unknown in Scotland with regard to this matter, and that he proposes to allow the electorates in Scotland, in the scheduled areas, to have ample opportunity of dealing with the amount of the representation both in its method and in its personnel.

As I understand the Amendment before the House, the intention and the effect of it are that the Order which the Secretary for Scotland proposes to make in the matter of the number of members should be advertised in the same way as the Order which he proposes to make in determining the divisions of the electoral areas. I have thought that in the latter case it is reasonable that this opportunity should be afforded, and I am bound to say that I appreciate the logic upon which my right hon. Friend's Amendment is based, the argument being that if it is reasonable in the one case, it is also reasonable in the other. I really think there is no answer on that, and I do not propose to make any answer except to say that I shall accept his Amendment. I think, probably, that that answers the point which the hon. Member for East Edinburgh has raised. I am not in a position here and now to announce the numbers or the relationship between the numbers which may be proposed after the divisions have been mapped out.

Will they be arbitrary?

They will not be arbitrary for this reason: When any proposal is made by me it will be published so as to make it known to all persons interested, and any objections or recommendations which they think fit to make will be considered, so that there will be the most ample opportunity for all interests to state their case, and to make any representations against the numbers proposed. I therefore think my hon. Friend could not describe that as arbitrary, I think that by making this concession to my right hon. Friend opposite I shall at the same time meet the main objections which the hon. Member for East Edinburgh has made. In these circumstances I should wish to move my Amendment along with that proposed by my right hon. Friend opposite.

Amendment to the proposed Amendment agreed to.

Proposed words, as amended, there inserted in the Bill.

CLAUSE 4.—(School Management Committees.)

(1) It shall be the duty of every education authority to prepare and submit to the Department for their approval a scheme or schemes for the constitution of committees (in this Act called "school management committees") for the management of schools or groups of schools under their control throughout their education area.

Every such scheme shall contain provision for the due representation of the education authority on each school management committee, and also, for the appointment thereto of at least one teacher engaged in a school under the management of such committee, and also, in the case of a county, shall have regard to the desirability of constituting separate school management committees for individual burghs and parishes, and shall provide for the appointment thereto on the nomination of local bodies (including town and parish councils and at the first constitution outgoing school boards) or failing such nomination directly, of persons resident in the locality and otherwise qualified to represent local interests ill school management.

(2) A school management committee shall, subject to any regulations and restrictions made by the education authority, have all the powers and duties of that authority in regard to the general management and supervision of the school or group of schools, including attendance thereat:

Provided that the education authority shall in every case themselves retain, exercise, and perform all their powers and duties in regard to—

( a ) the raising of money by rate or loan and the general control of expenditure;

( b ) the acquisition or holding of land;

( c ) the appointment, transfer, remuneration and dismissal of teachers;

( d ) the appointment of bursars, and the exercise of the powers conferred by the Section of this Act relating to power to facilitate attendance at secondary schools and other institutions; and

( e ) the recognition, establishment, or discontinuance of intermediate or secondary schools or of centres of advanced technical instruction.

(3) A scheme for the constitution of a school management committee for the management of a group of schools may provide for the delegation by that committee of any of their powers and duties in respect of any particular school (other than any power or duty relating to school attendance) to a school committee constituted as the scheme may prescribe.

I beg to move, in Sub-section (1), after the word "constitution" ["schemes for the constitution"], to insert the words "and election."

The effect of that is that the School Management Committees should be elected. I think I can give my reasons most clearly by reading from a resolution passed by a conference of the school boards in the county of Lanark held on 25th September:

Under the present scheme the school management committees would become merely nominal and would have no power, and they would take little interest in the proceedings, and the whole educational work, which it is impossible to carry out under the direct supervision of the central education authority, would be carried out by petty officials, if at all. There is another alternative which has been suggested in this resolution of the conference of school boards in the county of Lanark, and that is that a much larger central education authority should be constituted in each educational area, and that they should delegate the work to committees of their body. That, I think, is quite a reasonable proposition, but you could not delegate the work to committees, say, in Midlothian, if you only had forty members on the whole body In my own county, if you had a much larger body for the local education, say, 100 or 120 members, then you would be able to delegate committees of four or five members each to each of the areas of the school boards That is another proposal, and I should not object to either, but I wish to raise my protest against this nominated and co-opted body without responsibility to the electors.

6.0 P.M.

I have pleasure in seconding the Amendment, because I think it is exceedingly good. A similar suggestion was pressed by many of us in Grand Committee, but did not unfortunately on those occasions meet with the sympathy of the Government, and I hope that now it will have a happier fate. It is not only a good Amendment from any point of view, but even from the point of view of the trained administrators of Dover House it is an absolutely harmless proposal. No later than this very forenoon one of these representatives who are sent up by Scottish school boards to London came to me and said, "What is my position under this new school management committee? I am a man of strong views. I am able to voice my strong views because I depend on the support at the poll of the workers in my own little constituency. But if I am nominated by somebody, I know very well with whom I shall have to work, and I shall be up against them, and I shall be in a minority. They might say at first that I am a man with a lifelong experience of education, but after a while I should begin to get up against the laird and the factor, and perhaps even up against an Established Church minister." The fats of that man would be that all his ability and all his long knowledge of education would be lost, because these people would say, "This is a difficult fellow to work with; and we are not going to nominate or co-opt him any longer." I do not see why, if democracy is a good thing for a whole country—and the Secretary for Scotland and the Lord Advocate have conceded that by giving us an ad hoc authority—it should be a bad thing when you come to a small local area, and I have pleasure in supporting the Amendment as a protest against the extinction of local democracy, which is one of the greatest flaws of the Bill. I trust my hon. and gallant Friend will go to a Division, and, if so, he will find a good many who will support his view.

As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Shaw) has just said, the proposition which this Amendment is intended to put forward was discussed upstairs, and was the subject of a good deal of discussion there. As he also said, that discussion did not result, I am afraid, in convincing us who were in charge of the Bill that the Amendment was one which we could accept, and I must say at once that I do not think our minds have changed in that respect at all. The House will observe that what is proposed is to make the school management committee appointed by election, but how by election, or by what electorate, the Amendment makes no provision for at all. The Amendment could not possibly be accepted as it stands, because it is an Amendment which would simply leave the Bill and the scheme which the Bill propounds in the air. To return, however, to what are really the merits of the propositions, the hon. Member has himself said that to make the school management committees elective—and let me suppose by that that he means elective in more or less the same way as the education authority is elective, although I do not know what its area would be or who the electors would be—but supposing you had that, he admits that it is open to the obvious objection of two elective authorities. The obvious objection to the proposal, as the hon. and gallant Member for Midlothian frankly said, is that you cannot have two elective bodies set up to perform, the one the superior, and the other the subordinate, functions.

You have parish councils, school boards, and county councils.

I cannot regard any of those instances as having the smallest relevance to this question. The peculiarity of this is that the education authority of a county is responsible for the education policy to be pursued in the county and the educational finance. Relations of that kind do not exist at all in the cases the hon. Member put forward, and therefore I cannot admit the analogy would hold at all. But I would like to put two other considerations before the House which seem to me perfectly conclusive. For one thing, your school management committee may be, according to the circumstances of the particular locality, a managing body of only one school or of a group of schools. There may be, for example, schools of a different grade and schools which can be grouped conveniently under one committee, and accordingly the problem of election becomes insoluble—unless, indeed, you are going to make each school committee elected by the same electorate as elects the education authority itself. That would be a terrible affair.

I have a consequential Amendment down to that effect.

That, I am afraid, from our point of view, only increases the complete impracticability of what is suggested. I would like to bring forward another point which is very important when you take into view the whole scheme of the Bill. Remember, the school management committee is one of the most important links in the solution of the problem of the transferred school. Now you cannot make a school management committee which deals with a transferred school the subject of an election. The transferred school demands, and must get, the protection, or some such protection, as the Bill gives, in that there must be at least some assurance that it has one or more representatives of the particular religion to which the transferred school belongs. And, accordingly, you simply cannot leave that to the chance of a popular election. The truth is that if you made the school management committee elective, it would be fatal to what is one of the beneficent things we hope this Bill will solve, or, at any rate, carry us an enormous step forward—the solution of the difficulty of the voluntary schools. For these reasons, first of all because we cannot see our way at all to accept the plan of making the school management committee elective as well as the education authority; secondly, because, not only is there no machinery in this Amendment for an election, but there is no possibility of fixing an electoral area—the thing is impossible; and, lastly, because the school management committee would have to deal with this problem, in which we believe we have come near to a complete solution, namely, the transferred school, it is impossible to make it an elective body like the education authority, and, considering that this matter was fully discussed upstairs, I would suggest to the hon. and gallant Member, particularly in view of the fact that his Amendment would leave the Bill in the air, that, having quite legitimately and properly raised the point again, he might see his way not to press the matter further.

I think that, apart from the last consideration which the Lord Advocate addressed to the House, the whole of his argument failed to meet the case which was put forward by the hon. and gallant Member. His argument for elective school management committees was absolutely sound on democratic grounds, and it is of the utmost importance that the democratic element in school administration should be preserved in Scotland. The suggestion that it was impossible to have a kind of hierarchy of inferior and superior authorities responsible to the electorate dealing with the same administrative subjects is entirely contrary to the whole of our experience and practice in this country. Indeed, the whole of our government depends upon such a hierarchy for higher and subordinate elective authorities as it is, and there should be no difficulty at all in obtaining a workable system in which you had, first of all, in local education the elective authority for a large area, with subordinate elective authorities for the purpose of administration of groups of schools. But I admit the difficulty with regard to transferred schools, and while I regret that, in view of the difficulty, it may be impossible to press the Amendment, I could have hoped that some means might have been obtained of meeting it. I think we have run a great risk in respect of our educational system of having the subordinate local administration made entirely nugatory, that you will have the school management committees being nominated bodies, deprived of all real authority, as I believe is the experience of England. You will find local school management committees in England who have not even the power to put in a pane of glass at a school without reference to the county education committee. If that is the kind of system you are going to have in Scotland as the result of the nomination method, you will not get any men who value their time, or any men of ability, to go on to these school management committees, so that this subordinate local control will be really a complete sham and a farce. In these circumstances, I think the Government between the Committee and Report stages should have devised some means of meeting the object we have in view.

Although I share the difficulties of the Lord Advocate at this moment in regard to this Amendment, there is one remark he made which I confess rather alarms me. He said it is impossible for these school management committees to have anything to do with the geographical areas.

What I meant was that it was impossible for a school management committee appointed, say, to look after a group of schools of a certain class, to have a definite area attached to it.

That makes no difference to the point I am coming to, namely, that, unless you have something like an elected school management committee with a definite area under its charge, I fail to see how you can possibly hand over to that committee the duty of assuring attendance at school. In Sub-section (2) of this Clause the school management committee has the duty of supervising attendance, which means that it appoints the attendance officer and sees that the children attend school. That is done now, because each parish school board or borough school board looks after itself. I raised this point in Committee. But what the Lord Advocate says rather frightens me, and I would like to hear from the Secretary for Scotland how this question of school attendance can be dealt with unless there are geographical areas, under the charge of management committees. It is difficult enough now to lay salt on the tail of the defaulting parent or absentee child when you have responsibility as now absolutely definite. But if you say that one school management committee is to look after secondary schools, another elementary schools, another Catholic schools, another Episcopalian schools, how are you going to ensure that any particular child has salt laid on his tail and made to go to one school or another? I should really like the Secretary for Scotland to answer, because, after all, the attendance of children at school is a point in education.

I should like to ask the Secretary for Scotland a question. A suggestion has been made that these smaller bodies may find that they are without power to do so much as to mend a broken pane of glass without the permission of the parent body. Is there any foundation for that suggestion?

May I point out that the only people left off the committee are the parents of the children attending the schools? It seems to me to be a ridiculous dilemma into which we have got in regard to the parents of Scottish children. We have the representatives of the education authority, those also nominated by the teachers, also representatives of the new transferred schools—every interest practically is represented on the committee that is going to manage the schools except the parents of the children who attend the schools. I am raising the question later.

In view of the Amendment which has been put down, a proposal will subsequently be made in regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh.

I have been sitting on a school management committee this afternoon, not in Scotland, but in London, and I should like to assure the House that the system works exceedingly well. The small committee on which I sat this afternoon recommended three important matters for consideration, and I may add that I have known no instance in which these things have been refused. I think, therefore, the committee, although they may not be strictly clothed with powers, has a great-power in the management of the schools.

Though I am not convinced by the arguments which have been used—and I think that time will show that I am right—I beg to ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.

I should like an answer from the Secretary for Scotland on the important point I put to him.

There is also my point.

That of the broken pane of glass?

In regard to the question of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gulland), I am quite sure that my right hon. Friend will see that under normal circumstances the school management committee will be on a geographical basis. In these circumstances I do not think that any difficulty in regard to the question of parents will possibly arise. I regret very much I did not hear the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Leith Burghs.

May I repeat it? I drew the attention of the Secretary for Scotland to the fact that a suggestion had been made that these smaller committees, when appointed, may find themselves without the power of mending a broken pane of glass without asking the kind permission of the parent body. If there is no foundation for that suggestion it is a pity that people should be misled; if there is any foundation for the suggestion I should like to know what it is.

There is no foundation whatever for the suggestion.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words

"Every such scheme shall contain provision for the due representation of the education authority on each school management committee, and also, for the appointment thereto of at least one teacher engaged in a school under the management of such committee, and also, in the case of a county."

and to insert instead thereof the words,

"Every such scheme shall contain provision—

This Amendment really gives effect to the promise which I made in Grand Committee to consider the question of the representation of the teachers on the school management committee, and also representation upon those committees of persons representing the views of parents of children attending the transferred schools. In connection with these two undertakings I have embraced the opportunity of generally redrafting the Clause, in order that it may be of clearer construction than it was when it emerged from Grand Committee with certain Amendments to it. In substance, therefore, the Amendment which I am moving provides for representation on each school committee—first, of the education authority itself; second, of the teachers engaged in the schools under the committee; and, third, the parents representing the views of the parents of the children who are attending these transferred schools. Finally, in the case of the county, there are to be persons appointed by local bodies, in which expression town and parish councils and outgoing school boards at the first election of these committees are included, whilst other representation from other bodies may be considered. May I add that I have altered slightly the Amendment, paragraph ( a ), as it is upon the Paper, the alteration being designed to give effect to the Amendment standing upon the Paper just below mine in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh.

I desire to thank my right hon. Friend for including mine in his Amendment. I will not, therefore, move my Amendment. I am glad that we are going to have on these school management committees the parents of the pupils who are attending the school. While we have not got all we wanted by the other Amendments, at any rate it is some assurance that if the parents are upon these committees they will be able to look after and better safeguard the interests of the children.

I do not want to be hypercritical, but the phrasing is, representation on the school management committee of the education authority. That may read in two ways, and the words may convey a meaning other than that intended by the right hon. Gentleman, and it may be for the Law Courts to decide. What I understand my right hon. Friend to mean is that there shall be direct representation of the education authority on the school management committee. But it does not say that. Representation of the education authority does not necessarily mean that members of the education authority shall be on the school management committee. I should, I confess, like to see words put in that will make it absolutely clear that there are to be directly elected members of the education authority upon the school management committees. I do not think it is clear.

I really do not think that there is the slightest ground for the apprehension my right hon. Friend has expressed, and my view is confirmed, I think, by those Members behind me who are lawyers. All I can say is this: I will look into the matter, and if there is any real doubt about it—I think there is none—I will see that it is put right in another place.

On behalf of those who have spoken for the transferred schools, I should like to take the opportunity of thanking the right hon. Gentleman for the Amendment he has suggested. He has provided for the representation of the teachers, a matter which my colleague, in the Committee, pressed upon him, and which I think found general favour. So far as the transferred schools are concerned it is right to say that while we have not obtained all that we had expected for the representatives of those schools that are being transferred, yet the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland has gone, I believe, as far as it was possible for him to go to meet us. On behalf of my colleague, and those interested, I thank him for the concession he has made.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in Subsection (2), after the word ["subject" "subject to any regulations and restrictions"], to insert in the Bill the words "except as hereinafter provided."

This is only an introductory Amendment to the one which immediately follows. The several Amendments are proposed to be put into the Bill in fulfilment of a promise made while the Bill was in Committee. The point put was this: It was said: "Well; but there are in certain cases particular burghs which have taken a good deal of trouble and spend a good deal of money in establishing, equipping, and so on, first-class secondary schools of their own: does it not seem very hard that their school management committee should not in future be free in its management and control of these institutions?" We thought there was a good deal of force in that view, particularly in the case of such burghs as that represented by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. Accordingly we undertook to put into the Bill an Amendment, and this Amendment fulfils that pledge. There was a point raised—I am told by myself—as to the case—not a common case—where the secondary school was in a landward area, and it will be seen that the Amendment covers it. It will be observed that we have covered that ease also, because the form the proviso takes is that where there is a school management committee having under its management a secondary school, in that case it shall have all the powers and duties without being subject to the regulations and restrictions which were thought to be unjust in such a case.

It is quite unnecessary to say that the pledge which the Lord Advocate gave in Committee on this point has been honoured, not only in the letter, but in the spirit, and the fact that the Government have put down this Amendment will give very great satisfaction and relief, especially in areas in Scotland where there is a very strong interest in secondary schools. With regard to the other point which has been raised. I think we may have some confidence that it is not only within the scope of the Bill that such an amalgamation may be effected, but it is the policy of the Government. I beg to thank the Lord Advocate for his proposal.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In Subsection (2), after the word "thereat," insert in the Bill the words,

"Provided that a school management committee having under its management a secondary school shall have all the said powers and duties not subject to any such regulations or restrictions."

After the word "provided," to insert in the Bill the word "further."—[

I beg to move to leave out Sub-section (3), which now becomes unnecessary.

There was a matter which the right hon. Gentleman undertook to take into consideration on Clause 4, namely, to give wider powers to local management committees in the larger counties, and I want to know whether that is a thing which they can or cannot do. The right hon. Gentleman promised to let me know.

I am extremely sorry that I did not recollect having given any such undertaking. I do not remember the point being raised in Committee upstairs.

Perhaps I might remind my right hon. Friend that in Committee I raised a point in regard to the great difficulty which large counties like Inverness-shire would have in managing their schools purely by the local education authority, and I asked whether some of the powers might not be delegated to the school management committees for those larger counties, and the Lord Advocate said he would take the point into consideration. I then said I would like something more definite, and the right hon. Gentleman will remember that a little altercation ensued between us.

I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend for reminding me of this point. I know that he raised a question with regard to the dismissal of teachers, the suggestion being that there might be difficulty in assembling the educational authority sufficiently frequently to deal with the appointment, transfer, and dismissal of teachers, and it was suggested that this power might be confined to the school management committee. There is very great difficulty in handing over to the school management committees the appointment or dismissal of teachers, and I feel sure that that proposal would be very strongly opposed in influential quarters. I should not be prepared to suggest that that power should be given to school management committees in large counties or any other counties. The point my right hon. Friend has in mind is probably met by an Amendment standing in my name on the Paper, which will have the effect of requiring the education committees to meet at least once a month except in July and August. If that Amendment is accepted, and I propose to move it, then I think the apprehensions of my right hon. Friend with regard to the capacity of the education committees to discharge all the duties referring to teachers and other matters would be very largely met. I hope my right hon. Friend will be satisfied with that explanation.

I wish to know whether St would be competent under this proposal for a school management committee to appoint of their own number a small committee to look after and manage a particular school, in the same way as a committee could be appointed with a special object by school boards. Supposing, for example, a management committee had three schools, I want to know can they divide up their own bodies into separate committees, each to look after a separate school?

I think that is really a question of law, but prima facie I see no objection to such sub-committees being appointed.

Amendment agreed to.

CLAUSE 5.—(Power to Facilitate Attendance at Secondary Schools and Other Institutions.)

(1) It shall be the duty of an education authority, with a view to securing so far as practicable that no child or young person resident in their education area who is qualified for attendance at an intermediate or secondary school, and in their opinion shows promise of profiting thereby, shall be debarred therefrom by reason of the expense involved, to grant assistance in the case of any such child or young person by payment of travelling expenses, or of fees, or of the cost of residence in a hostel, or of a bursary or maintenance allowance in lieu of such cost, or other wise, as the authority think fit. And it shall also be lawful for an education authority similarly to assist any duly qualified person resident in their education area to enter or attend a university, or a training college, or a central institution (including classes affiliated thereto), or in special cases any other educational institution approved for the purpose by the Department.

(2) It shall further be lawful for an education authority to grant assistance by payment of travelling expenses necessarily incurred in the case of any person resident in their education area in attending continuation classes under a scheme for instruction in such classes as in this Act provided.

(3) Any assistance granted under this Section shall be such as the education authority consider proper and necessary, having regard to the circumstances of each case, including the circumstances of the parents.

I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words "the duty of" and to insert instead thereof the words "lawful for."

The history of this Amendment is very peculiar. The Bill as originally drafted contained the words "It shall be lawful for," but upstairs perhaps with a little precipitation and without sufficient consideration, I was induced to accept an Amendment substituting for those words the words "lawful for." By this Amendment I propose to restore the Bill to its original state, I believe the Amendment was proposed by the right hon. Member for Fife (Mr. Adamson) and it was supported in various quarters of the Committee. The difficulty is that you are dealing here with a Clause which gives a discretion to the education authority to provide bursaries, allowances and other financial assistance for deserving pupils, and it permits the exercise of the widest discretion on their part. While I have the strongest sympathy with the motives which animated the Mover of this Amendment, nevertheless after the fullest consideration I have been able to give to the matter it seems to me that the introduction of these words "the duty of" make the Clause self-contradictory. Therefore I propose to restore the words as they were in the original Bill.

I am very much surprised to find the Secretary for Scotland moving this Amendment. I understood that the Amendment which I moved on the Committee stage was practically accepted by the overwhelming majority of the members of the Committee, and it seems to me to be a breach of faith on the part of the Secretary for Scotland to seek now to alter that part of the Bill which was agreed to by such an overwhelming majority upstairs and which was accepted by him.

I am not quite sure what the right hon. Gentleman means by an overwhelming majority. There was no Division, so far as I recollect, and I accepted the Amendment, but on reflection it turns out that it was not advisable.

It was so obviously the will of the majority of the members of the Committee that the Secretary for Scotland accepted the Amendment. In his introductory remarks to-day the right hon. Gentleman did not give any reason for his change of mind, and I would like to know why this change has taken place. The Bill as it stands at the present moment without this Amendment puts the duty on education authorities of finding certain bursaries and fees for maintenance under certain conditions. If this Amendment is agreed to what is now the duty of educational authorities will not be carried out. I am sure this change of front will be a great disappointment to organised labour in Scotland, for they were more than pleased with the Amendment which stood in my name, and they will feel that their interests have been betrayed by the change that is proposed under this Amendment. So far as my personal atti- tude is concerned I have no intention of agreeing to such a change, and I shall divide the House unless the Secretary for Scotland sees fit to withdraw his Amendment which I hope, on consideration, he will do.

As the Member who moved the Amendment which was accepted by the right hon. Gentleman in Grand Committee, I should like to express my intense disappointment at his action to-day. It was evident that he repented very rapidly, for as I made my way home to Scotland I saw a report in the "Glasgow Herald" which announced that he proposed to make the change and which also gave some hint as to the argument to be used. It said that the Amendment which had been accepted made the Clause lopsided. It is a tailor-made argument, and I do not think that he would use it. I am sure that he has some very much better reason than that for witdrawing the Amendment. May I repeat what I said in Grand Committee and what he was good enough to accept as reasonable. The greatest work that we have to do when the War is over is to seek out and develop all the capacity that we can in this country. It would be next door to a crime if any capable boy or girl in any part of the land were prevented from rising to the full extent of his or her educational posibility because of the defection of some authority. The Glasgow School Board has accepted quite frankly the Clause as amended in Grand Committee, but it is quite possible that on the one side of an artificial boundary you might have an up-to-date authority fully cognisant of its duties and frankly and thoroughly arranging for the maintenance of its capable boys and girls and that on the other side of the boundary you might have a backward authority taking no steps whatever to find out what capacity it had among its children. By allowing this permissive Clause to be restored you are really putting the children of Scotland under a very grave disability indeed.

I am absolutely astounded that my right hon. Friend, whose educational zeal is beyond question, should permit himself to be guided—I am sure that he has been guided—by other people in the direction that I have indicated. At the last possible moment I would beseech the Committee to stand firm on this question. Its universities have been the glory of Scotland, but scores of thousands have not been able to send their sons to those institutions because they have not had the means. You will give the backward authorities the opportunity of making this Clause of no effect whatever in their own localities. I earnestly hope that the Committee will insist on having the Clause as it passed Grand Committee. My right hon. Friend sets a very bad example to the whole of the Members of the Committee. What is to prevent me or anybody else from refusing to accept any of the findings of the Grand Committee and from putting down again every Amendment in order that we may have them discussed here in this House? My right hon. Friend has behind him a mechanical majority that voted a few minutes ago against Scottish Members being allowed to have their own education Department in their own capital, and, of course, he can carry this Amendment against us no matter what the arguments may be, but I must repeat that I am astounded at his action.

I cannot help thinking that we are rather at cross purposes. If my right hon. Friend's Amendment were carried, the Bill would say that it "shall be lawful for an education authority to do as that authority thinks fit." Is it any use this House asserting that it "shall be the duty of any education authority to do as it thinks fit"? It seems to me that there is absolutely nothing in it.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Fife (Mr. Adamson) knows, I was one of those who shared his views as to the desirability of allowances of this kind being given where necessary, but may I say, as one who voted with him in the Division which took place upstairs, that I think he was altogether in error in making a charge of bad faith against the right hon. Gentleman. May I draw his attention to the rubric of the Clause which stands "Power to facilitate attendance"? It is not an obligation to give in every case. Later on the language used is, "And it shall be lawful for an authority" to do so-and-so. The Secretary for Scotland stands quite discharged from altering the meaning and contents of the Clause. There is nothing in the alteration which he now suggests that clashes with any idea that was in my mind when I voted with the thirty-two Members in favour of the one set of words as against the other. I wish my right hon. Friend would withdraw the charge which has unfortunately been made. I am sure that it has been made under a misapprehension, or, at all events, I am satisfied that it is quite unsubstantiated.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words "so far as practicable."

I accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, after the word "child" ["that no child or young person resident in their education area"], to insert in the Bill the words "having attained the age of thirteen years."

This is one of a series of Amendments which have for their object the provision of maintenance grants for children over the age of thirteen attending any of our schools in Scotland. I am convinced that if the Scottish people are to get the full benefit of the provisions of this Bill some such arrangements as are provided for in these Amendments require to be made. Unless we have some such provision, the successful administration of the Bill will be endangered. I readily confess that the Bill is a great advance, but great as that advance is, it really does not go as far as the working classes in Scotland desire. For years they have been demanding a standard of education for their children higher than is provided for in this Bill. They want their children to have as easy a passage from the elementary school to the university as is at present enjoyed by the children of the wealthy classes. They recognise the importance of education to their children and to the nation. They fully recognise that unless we can provide the whole of the children of the nation with as high a standard of education as is possible we are not likely to hold our place among the nations of the world. Some very flattering speeches have been made as to the arrangements which have been provided by the Scottish people for the education of their children. The working classes desire even a higher standard of education than is contained in this Bill, but, at the same time, they realise that unless some arrangement is made in the form of maintenance grants for assisting them in securing that education they are not going to get the full benefit of the Bill.

The difficulty that stands in the way is an economic one. It is a difficulty that the Secretary for Scotland will find stands in the way of the successful administration of his Bill. I know that I may be met with the argument that the proper method for dealing with a difficulty of this kind is to raise the wages of the parents to a level that will enable them to provide the education for their children that is outlined in the Bill, but as one who has had considerable experience, extending over twenty or thirty years, I can assure the Members of this House that it is not such a very easy task to permanently raise the wages of the working classes to the extent that they would require to be raised in order to enable them to get the full benefit of the provisions of this Bill. I therefore very strongly urge upon the Secretary for Scotland to accept this Amendment and the whole series of Amendments dealing with this particular part of the Bill, and thereby make provision for meeting the economic difficulty of many of the working-class parents in Scotland. I can assure him that by doing so he will make provision for the successful administration of the Bill. On the other hand, unless he makes some such provision, he will endanger, in a serious degree, the successful administration of the measure. In conclusion, I would again personally appeal to him to give his serious and favourable consideration to the series of Amendments which stand in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Wilkie) and myself, and which have for their object the provision of the necessary maintenance grants to enable the children of Scotland to get the full benefit of the Bill.

7.0 P.M.

I beg to second the Amendment. The question really is an economic one, and to that extent I admit it is not a purely educational matter. At the same time it stands to reason that if you raise the school age of children, and place upon them and on young persons the obligation to attend continuation classes, you put on a large number of working-class shoulders a heavy financial burden. If I were sure that the wage level obtaining at the present time would be stereotyped, I do not think I would support the Amendment, but I am not sure of anything of the sort. I think wages may fall, and in that case serious obstacles will arise which will cause trouble to the education authorities with the working classes by reason of the pressure of inadequate wages. I should like to repeat a suggestion which I made in Commitee, one which I think provides a halfway house for the Secretary for Scotland, if he is inclined to sympathise with this proposal. It is that for a period of years following the introduction of the Bill—say, for seven years—power should be taken to pay these allowances, and that at the end of the seven years the whole question should come up for review, and if the level of wages then proves more satisfactory than it was ten years ago, the allowances might be dropped. In the meantime I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Fife (Mr. Adamson) that in many working-class homes conditons will be such as to interfere with the successful working of the Act, and with the securing of these educational benefits for the young people I hope therefore some concession may be made by the Government.

I am going to limit my remarks to the first of the series of Amendments—to the one immediately before the House. I cannot help thinking that almost everything said by the right hon. Gentleman who moved it, and the hon. Member who seconded it, had relevancy to questions arising out of the other Amendments.

I said so frankly; I said that this was one of a series of Amendments which had for their object the provision of a maintenance grant.

And that is why I venture to say that what the right hon. Gentleman said was not relevant at all to the Amendment now before the House. What that Amendment proposes to do is to limit the power given under the Clause Whereas, as the Bill stands, the education authority has power to give assistance to any child in an intermediate or secondary school who promises to benefit by study, the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment deliberately takes away from the education authority that power until the child has attained the age of thirteen years. Does my right hon. Friend mean to do that? If he does not, then I ask him to withdraw his Amendment and let us get to that part of his proposal which embodies his real meaning. The power given by the Bill is to grant assistance to a child who seems likely to benefit by being in an intermediate or secondary school. A child who is clever gets into the intermediate school at the age of eleven or twelve. Children are expected to pass into the intermediate school between the ages of twelve and thirteen, but a great many do so when they are only eleven years of age, and if the right hon. Member's Amendment is carried it will take away from that child the opportunity of participating in the maintenance grant until it is thirteen years of age or over. If the right hon. Gentleman does not wish to do that, let him withdraw his Amendment.

My right hon. Friend has somewhat ingeniously raised a point, but I do not think there is so much in it as he has endeavoured to suggest. He referred to this Amendment fixing the age at thirteen as a limiting Amendment. But he does not take into account the consequential Amendments which are on the Paper. May I call his attention to the fact that the Clause as it stands is a limiting Clause? There is a limit in it. This power of granting maintenance to children does not extend to all children. It only applies to those children who are qualified for attendance at intermediate or secondary schools. There is a very considerable limitation in that. The Amendment of my right hon. Friend aims at removing that limitation altogether and extending the power of making the maintenance grant for all children who have reached the age at which they would presumably be qualified for secondary or intermediate education. There can be no doubt that the age limit of thirteen is roughly the age limit for intermediate and secondary schools, but there may be children under that age who are attending these schools. My right hon. Friend ingeniously takes advantage of this fact to represent the Amendment as a drastic limitation of the Bill. As a matter of fact it is not a limitation. It is an extension of the provisions of the Bill, and we very much prefer it to the limitation in the Clause as it stands. We want the power to apply to all children capable of benefiting further by education, whether in intermediate or secondary or the ordinary schools.

Does the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment contend that the maintenance grant which he is advocating should be limited to children over thirteen years of age? Is it his intention in the series of Amendments which he has on the Paper to limit the grant in that way? I agree entirely with the view put forward by the Lord Advocate that this first Amendment would have the effect of limiting the grant to children over thirteen.

My intention is to provide maintenance grants for all children over the age of thirteen attending any school in Scotland, and not to limit it in the way suggested in the Clause.

If a child is under the age of thirteen and yet is capable of taking advantage of secondary or intermediate education, will it be excluded from the maintenance grant? I think the Lord Advocate is entirely right in saying that the effect of this Amendment will be to ensure that no child under thirteen years of age will get the maintenance grant.

Amendment negatived.

I beg to move to leave out the words "is qualified for attendance at an intermediate or secondary school, and."

The limitation in the Bill at present is that the grant is only to be extended to children who are qualified for attendance at intermediate or secondary schools. We desire to have the power extended to all children. My right hon. Friend has shown a great deal of sympathy in favour of making the provisions of the Bill as wide as possible, and I hope therefore he will accept this Amendment. I hope this Amendment will have the right hon. Gentleman's acceptance, for it is really designed to secure the end to which he professes to be quite favourable.

I beg to second the Amendment. It practically covers every ground of the Amendment which stands in the name of my hon. Friend (Mr. Wilkie) and myself. I have already put my case on the broad general issue that this and other Amendments standing in my name raise, and I have no intention of repeating myself, but express the hope that the Secretary for Scotland will agree to the principle that is contained in this series of Amendments.