My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the accident in question was the subject of a special bulletin issued by the Accident Investigations Branch on 10th July 1981 and I am placing a copy in the Library. The Chief Inspector of Accidents has ordered an inspector's investigation.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. May I ask him two questions? Whatever the cause of the accident, is it not time that the Queen's Flight was up-dated, not only for the sake of the peace of mind of Her Majesty but also for Ministers in this country and other heads of state who fly in these particular aircraft? Secondly, if it is a question of finance, is it not possible to merge the Queen's Flight with No. 32 Squadron so that the Government departments using it could have the cost spread over them, rather than that the Ministry of Defence should itself have to pay the whole cost?

My Lords, the question of re-equipping the Queen's Flight goes, if I may say so, rather wide of the Question on the Order Paper, but I can assure the noble Earl that there is no question of any difficulty with the aircraft presently operated by the Queen's Flight, and that of course the matters arising from this particular accident have been closely attended to in respect of those aircraft.

My Lords, if it is the case that this accident might have been due to a cargo door becoming dislodged at the rear of the aircraft and getting stuck in the tailplane, can my noble friend say how many such cases might have occurred in the past? Can he also say whether the Civil Aviation Authority have recommended any modifications, and whether indeed any of these modifications have been mandatory modifications?

My Lords, there have been some similar incidents, I regret to say, in respect of this door fitted to this particular type of aircraft. Clearly this is a matter which will engage the close attention of the investigators. A number of minor modifications have been called for to the door system on this aircraft in the past. So far as I know, none of them was made mandatory.

My Lords, in spite of this tragic accident will the Minister confirm that the 748 is a remarkably fine aircraft that has been exported to nearly all of the countries of the world, and has been, and is, in fact a tribute to British production of civil aircraft?

My Lords, my noble friend is of course quite correct. I think 300 or so of this particular type of aircraft, or close derivatives of it, are in service around the world and have given very remarkable service.

My Lords, as I am not certain whether my noble friend heard my second supplementary, may I ask whether he did? If not, it was to ask whether he would agree that the Queen's Flight might be merged with No. 32 Squadron, thereby saving costs?

My Lords, I did hear what my noble friend said, but like his first supplementary it had little to do with the Question on the Order Paper.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, there have been no developments since 29th June to change the Answer I gave on that date. The Government have always been concerned that no one should be deterred, on financial grounds, from seeking the treatment he needs and, for this reason, on each occasion when the prescription charge has been increased the income level at which people may claim low-income exemption has been raised. The Government feel that by this method help is available to a far wider section of the community who are living on a low income than would be the case if help was restricted to specified groups—many of whom have other resources.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply, and encouraged by the fact that the lower income groups might stand a better chance of relief from the pain and suffering that everyone endures when there is an illness in a family. May I please ask the noble Lord whether he would not agree that after the most fearful war in world history this nation created a completely free National Health Service which became part and parcel of the texture of our way of life, and that that now seems to be run down? And in these days, when so many people are unemployed, would he not agree that it must be a blot on any society if people have to decide whether they can have pain relieved because they may not be able to afford to?

My Lords, this really does seem rather wide of the Question. The National Health Service is in no way run down. It is one of the very few growth industries in the country today, with more real money made available annually. Therefore, I do not think I can answer the rest of the noble Lord's question.

My Lords, can the Minister tell us how the prescription charge of £1 relates to the average cost of the service which is being provided?

Yes, my Lords. The average cost of a prescription is currently £3·37, so the £1 charge is considerably under one-third of the cost.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Government's policy of increasing prescription charges so frequently, and at such a very high level at the moment, is imposing considerable hardship, particularly upon people who need to have more than one drug? This is something I hope the Government will reconsider.

My Lords, the Government are well aware of that, and in inflationary times this is pretty difficult to avoid. I would say that out of all the prescriptions—and there are something over 300 million per annum in England—68 per cent. are given free of charge and 6 per cent. are provided on the basis of prepayment certificates, or season tickets as they are better known.

My Lords, is it possible for the Government to make known these facilities to people on lower incomes, in view of the fact that large numbers of them are completely unaware of these facilities at the moment?

This is a continuing worry, my Lords, not only in this case but in all matters of benefits. The Government make strenuous efforts to make this information available. It is of course well known in all the offices around the country, but the question of take-up is a perpetual worry which does not apply just today but has always applied.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister to inform the House of the cost of administering the collection of the £1 prescription charge and of administering the exemptions, and how one compares with the other?

I wish I could, my Lords, but I am afraid I cannot.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, with the support of his ministerial team, is responsible for matters relating to law and order.

My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that short Answer, may I ask whether he is aware that my Question certainly implies no reflection on the Home Secretary? However, if we take the multitude of problems, apart from crime, with which the Home Secretary has to contend, may I ask my noble friend whether he thinks it is fair or possible to expect him today to be responsible for countering the rising amount of crime and violence which we are witnessing? Further, would my noble friend agree that, if we had a Minister for law and order, he could concentrate entirely on those subjects and inquire into the causes to see whether any groups are spreading sedition and misleading our young people?

My Lords, it is the responsibility of the Government in this country to see that the agencies of law and order can do their work effectively, and I certainly join with my noble friend in his wish to see that their work is done as effectively as possible. I think it is fair for me to claim that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has shown very effectively that the necessary equipment is being made available to the police for them to deal with those who are rioting and looting, and as your Lordships will have read in the newspapers, the courts are dealing with cases arising from recent violence effectively and swiftly.

My Lords, would the Minister be kind enough to tell the House the comparative costs of employing another Minister instead of employing a few more policemen?

My Lords, the answer to the first part of that supplementary question is that I do not think anyone could get better value for money than they get out of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. As for the second part, it might be of interest to the House to know that we now have 7,000 more policemen in this country than we had in May 1979.

Yes, my Lords, but does the Minister not realise that it is not just a question of numbers? It is a question of organisation, will and policy. That is what is required, along with anticipation, which is perhaps more important than any other quality. Is the noble Lord aware that that is where the Government have been lacking?

My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, the Government have not been lacking here. The whole basis of the Answer to my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard is, as the noble Lord with his long experience will know much better than I do, that in this country the police cannot be directed, for good reasons of democracy and freedom, in what they do; it is the chief constables who are responsible for their operations. And the courts cannot be directed by any member of the Government in what they decide. However, where I absolutely take the noble Lord's point is that it is up to the Government to see that matters work, and I would add to the information I have already given that one of the valuable things which my noble friend has set in train is a co-ordinating system which is based here in London, so that different forces around the country can decide where and how police should be moved between police forces.

My Lords, reverting to the Minister's first Answer, may I ask him to discuss with the Secretary of State the possibility that, even at the taxpayers' expense, more publicity should be given to the sentences imposed for rioting, associating with that publicity details of the length of time that habitually occurs between the committal of an offence and the sentence being imposed?

I am grateful to my noble friend for that supplementary, my Lords, and his comments at the end of it were of the greatest importance. My noble friend may have noticed from today's newspapers that the courts are dealing swiftly, and I am sure effectively, with the very serious troubles which have been occurring in the last 10 days.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether from the reply to a question asked of him recently it would be right to infer that the situation regarding law and order under the present Government in the past two years has necessitated increasing the police force by 7,000?

No, my Lords. I said that the police forces taken nationally have increased by 7,000 men and women since May of 1979. May I point out that the increase had begun before the time of the general election and resulted in the Edmund-Davies inquiry set up by Mr. Merlyn Rees. So that there is no misunderstanding, I would add that that has brought more or less all the police forces throughout the land up to establishment, except the Metropolitan Police, which is still below establishment, but is recruiting month by month.

My Lords, following what the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, said, would not my noble friend agree that if any Government are to be criticised for lack of foresight in the training, organisation and equipping of our police, it should be the previous Government, who did so little when the signs were so clear? Would not my noble friend also agree that much credit should be given to the present Government, who have done more than any of their predecessors in helping over the organisation and training of reserves and in the provision of new equipment, such as is widely used on the continent, and which will all make such a difference to the security of the people of this country?

My Lords, my noble friend refers to very serious matters which have been of great concern throughout the 1970s. However, I would point out that I did refer to the action taken by Mr. Merlyn Rees under the previous Government, and I do not detract from one word of what I said with reference to the right honourable gentleman.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that at the last general election the great plank of the Conservative Party, in attacking us, was that they would restore law and order? Even the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack made a lot of noises about law and order, but it is worse today than it was when we were in power.

My Lords, my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack is the most law-abiding noble Lord in the country. Both my noble and learned friend and the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, would surely see the force of the fact that there are now 7,000 more men and women in the police forces throughout the land than there were two years ago. This is of vital importance at the present time.

My Lords, I think perhaps we should move on to the next Question.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the Government are determined to provide a lasting solution to unemployment by persevering in our efforts to create a stable economic and financial climate, where more resources may be released for industry to generate wealth and jobs, and by giving substantial aid to individuals and industries caught in the painful machinery of an economy changing gear. This solution cannot be achieved by the proposals put forward by the Leader of the Opposition. The proposals include a substantial increase in public expenditure, financed by increased borrowing, which could not be reconciled with the lower interest rates which the right honourable gentleman has promised simultaneously.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that very brave and courageous reply, which is about as far from the truth as Sydney is from London; but it was not a bad effort. What some noble Peers will do for their party is amazing! Does not the noble Earl realise that the policies of the present Government are debasing the conditions of life for millions of our fellow countrymen, and that if the Government pursue such policies that will continue to be the effect? Is the noble Earl really not aware of the horrible social tensions that this policy has created? Is he not aware that there is a smell of decay throughout this island—

Reading!

It is a a good one, too, my Lords. Outraged unemployed youth is reacting. Do the Government know that silent degradation will produce no response, and that the only way to overcome all these problems is at least to follow some of the proposals of the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition?—which I believe both sides of industry and all thinking men would approve. Should not the Government at least consider that?

My Lords, as an employment Minister, and, if I may say so, a bigger spending Minister than I should like to be, I am well aware of the high costs of social problems in our economy. That is why I should like a more competitive and more wealthy economy, in order to be able to distribute the money. With regard to the points about the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, I would say that it is quite fair and right to put forward alternative policies, but it is not fair nor is it right to try to put forward alternative arithmetic.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the "recent proposals" referred to in the Question are really the old proposals which, when the present Opposition were in Government, resulted in 1½, million unemployed, with the figure rising? That was at a time before the world depression which has made things so much more difficult.

My Lords, it is certainly true that, when the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition last held high office, unemployment doubled, and he and his Government were in the hands of international creditors, in the form of the International Monetary Fund, within 19 months.

My Lords, can the noble Lord help us as to what would be the effect on the unemployment figures if the defence policies of Her Majesty's Opposition were adopted?

My Lords, I think that the effect would be fairly devastating indeed, and I take the point that the noble Lord makes.

My Lords, is the noble Earl really saying to the House that there are no alternatives to the policies now being followed by Her Majesty's Government? Is he aware that judged by every criterion enunciated by the Government themselves, the policies of the Government have been an abysmal failure? Is he also aware that that feeling is not confined to this side of the House, but that even within his own party there is a feeling, which has recently been articulated, that the policies are disastrous? If the noble Earl is unable to say that the Government themselves are at any rate considering some alternative policy, will he take the decent course of handing in the seals of office before the Recess?

My Lords, I do not think that that was a very helpful supplementary question. The noble Lord asked me what I thought. I must confess that I have always been an agnostic about policies. What I find is that the intractable arithmetic of a trading economy in a world recession cannot be easily bucked. No matter how painful it may be, one must secure a more competitive economy which can trade more evenly with its overseas competitors, in order to be able to restore the levels of social spending that this economy appears to demand.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there are several of us on this side of the House who would like to spend more on this and that, but then we find that ultimately the money has to come from somewhere, and does not grow on trees? To think that money does grow on trees results only in printing money, creating far worse unemployment, and finally in going the way of the Weimar Republic. Furthermore, is my noble friend aware that the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, is very similar to asking Saladin, instead of Richard I, to join in the siege of Acre?

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend in both his agricultural and historical metaphors.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that if next week we could return to the level of unemployment and the rate of inflation left by the Labour Government to the incoming Government, that would mean a massive improvement in the economic situation of the country? That is what that would mean. Bearing in mind that there now seems to be a permanent crisis which is creating bewilderment for people on both sides of industry, does not the noble Earl realise that, while perhaps he cannot go all the way in accepting the proposals enunciated by the Leader of the Opposition, there are people on both sides of industry, in all walks of life, who believe that something along those lines should now be adopted before our nation gets deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond created by the Tory Government?

My Lords, I really feel that the noble Lord must be a little more analytical. Successive Governments of various political persuasions have seen unemployment rise during their tenure of office. The sad fact of the matter is that Governments do not create very much employment. The success or failure of an economy determines employment. We are trying to establish the conditions in which the economy can become more successful.

My Lords it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that dinner will be available today at the usual time. The Committee stage of the Education (Scotland) Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 o'clock for a short period. During the adjournment the Antigua Termination of Association Order, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (Immunities and Privileges) (Amendment) Order 1981 and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (Immunities and Privileges) Order 1981 will be taken.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

moved Amendment No. 1:

May I first deal with the point as to the construction of the Bill. I have no doubt that those Members who have knowledge of these matters will know and appreciate that the Bill owes a lot to the distinguished Committee which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Renton. I for one appreciate that at first blush when one comes to look at a Bill such as this it reads somewhat differently to what one has been brought up to read. It could be said that it is more difficult to understand at first reading.

If I may say so, the noble Lord rather overstated his case. Regarding debates on "clause stand part", as the noble Lord knows very well, that is quite a good way of discussing the merits of an entire clause. It is only one way of doing it. In this particular instance, let me take Clause 1 of this Bill simply as an illustration of what I mean. If, for instance, the noble Lord wished to discuss new Clause 28B in isolation or if he wished to go further and invite the Committee to exercise it from the Bill, there is absolutely nothing to stop him putting down an amendment to that effect. For the purposes of the debate and of focussing the minds of Members upon whatever the noble Lord wishes to bring out, there is absolutely no difference between having a short Clause 1, or Clauses 2 and 3 and saying, "leave out Clause 2" and doing it in this new and different manner, taking it part by part. I cannot accept that the quality of our debates is in any way going to be prejudiced by the form in which the draftsman has composed the Bill.

Now I come to the actual amendments. The noble Lord queried whether these particular provisions in the Bill are necessary. As I told him on Second Reading—and I do not believe that I have to repeat myself—the unfortunate facts of the matter are that, as the rolls go down, so do the apparently uncontested choices which parents make. Putting it another way, the education authorities are making life more difficult for those who wish to choose the school at which they wish their child to be educated.

My right honourable friend has had a great deal of complaint from those who are disaffected. In the case of Lothian, there is evidence that a lot of people are simply not bothering to apply. They know full well the reaction they will get from the education authority. Therefore, in my submission, there is every reason why this legislation should be brought up to date so that everybody, and not least the local authorities, should know where they are.

Turning to Amendments Nos. 1 and 2, the noble Lord, Lord Ross, is quite right: provisions identical with these amendments were deleted on Report in another place and there has been a certain outcry, if that is the word, or possibly pressure from the Educational Institute of Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities for their restoration. The absence of such provisions in the Bill—and one must be sure about this—means that an authority would not be able to refuse a request by a parent for his child to attend a particular school on the grounds that the school or the state of education in which the child would be placed had reached any maximum number imposed by the authority. If I may say so, the noble Lord went wildly further than the meaning of the effect of this part of the clause. The noble Lord in effect does nothing more nor less than seek to restore these grounds for refusal for a placing request in the Bill.

In our view, the absence of such provisions in the Bill does not materially affect the balance of interest in favour of parents making placing requests and away from education authorities; and parents, even in the absence of such provisions, will have an absolute right of choice of school because there would be the implications for expenditure or the efficient provision of education in the event of capacity being exceeded. In other words, the various exclusions in the new Clause 28A(3) play just as much part. In addition, the circumstances under which placing requests could be refused on the ground that the school or stage of education had reach a maximum imposed by the authority are really largely covered in these other grounds of refusal to which I have just referred. They would operate in the case where acceding to the request would entail the authority in significant expenditure on extending or altering the accommodation or facilities in the school or, for instance, where it would entail the employment of an additional teacher.

The decision in the other place that provisions identical with these amendments should be deleted was taken in view of the widespread misinterpretation of their intentions which was becoming apparent. The view had arisen that the maximum roll fixed by an authority would not be open to challenge by parents and that the authority would have an absolute and unchallengable right to refuse a request where the maximum had been reached. It was being said that authorities could have used these provisions to deny access to the so-called "popular" schools. Of course, that was a view which was quite mistaken; but under the Bill a parent may refer a decision by the education authority refusing his request to an appeal committee, and thereafter to the sheriff if the appeal committee confirms the authority's decision. If a parent's request had been refused because a maximum had been reached, the parent could have argued to the appeal committee and to the sheriff that the maximum roll had been fixed too low and they could have upheld his request if they agreed with that view. Nevertheless, as confusion had arisen on that point, it seemed best to the Government to remove any confusion on Report in another place, and the best way of doing that was to delete from the Bill the provision of maximum rolls. So I would suggest to the Committee that this was a right and sensible decision. What it has done is to remove from a possibly recalcitrant authority what I might call a bogus decision for refusing a request—

A bogus decision?

If the noble Lord will listen, he can of course come back in a few seconds, but—

I just wanted to make sure whether the noble Earl the Minister did say "a bogus decision".

Yes, I think the noble Lord's hearing was perfectly accurate on this occasion. But let me clear up one other possible confusion. The deletion of these maximum roll provisions by the Government does not mean that the authorities will be prevented from calculating maximum rolls or intakes from the schools; but it does seem that the fact that a maximum roll had been reached will not be a legitimate ground for refusal of a placing request under the new Clause 28A(3), and authorities may continue to calculate such maximum rolls informally as part of their administrative arrangements and planning. They may well indeed be of assistance to parents who are considering the likely availability of places in a school. Therefore I reject the claim by the noble Lord, Lord Ross, that education authorities will not be able to plan ahead. What this amendment in another place meant was that they can plan ahead just as well and just as easily as they could before; but, as I said, it will remove a possible rather unfortunate let-out for an education authority which was trying to deny parents the essential right of choice which we believe they should have.

I think the Minister has argued against the amendment very much in the terms I expected, partly by saying that there are enough safeguards in the Bill in subsection (3)(a), but I would say there is a situation where you could have too many children in a class but four or five more will not mean there has to be an additional teacher, and four or five more in a class would not mean that accommodation had to be altered. It can mean that the education provided for that class will be not nearly so satisfactory. Indeed, I should have thought that although the authorities can still plan, if there is not some power behind the plan and some muscle in the law, their planning can be really turned to nothing. The Government are always asking local authorities to be economical and to close schools. If you are going to plan for a closure you have to plan very far ahead. It needs excellent planning, and if there is no back-up in the law it is going to be extremely difficult for the authorities. I would strongly support the amendment.

I have listened with great interest to what has been said because I spent quite a long time of my life as chairman of an education committee, doing the sort of planning which the noble Lord, Lord Ross, speaks of and which was necessary, particularly in a rural area, when the population changed. Numbers might go down and it was therefore necessary, rather reluctantly on my part, either to amalgamate two rural schools or to close one and take the children to a school in a nearby town. But it did not really worry the education authority, because in fact they only did it because it was necessary and because the parents wanted it, and therefore it all went quite smoothly.

Of course I realise it is quite different organising things in an area where the population is very small: when you get to cities like Glasgow or Dundee you are in a very different position. On the other hand, the population in schools is going down, as we all know. The birth rate is going down and there are fewer people to cater for. How long it will last we do not know, because populations fluctuate; but I think the Government are right in giving full opportunities for parents to choose schools and to have a safeguard, which is that if conditions in an industrial area become very difficult to fulfil they will have opportunities for making different arrangements. But, on the whole, this is a fairly simple and straight forward way of dealing with the matter.

I do not think it is necessary to get very excited about the fact that it is interfering with the parents or the local authority, because the co-operation between the two—certainly, in areas that I know in Scotland—has always been very good. This will make it easier and is, on the whole, quite satisfactory. So I support the Government in this clause and in the general principle of parental choice which they are continuing. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ross, that, of course, we have always had parental choice in Scotland. That has been going on for years and has, on the whole, worked very well. This decision will not interfere with that principle, and it may improve on it. So I support the Government in this matter.

I am sorry about the reply from the Government, which was very unhelpful indeed. I begin to wonder why on earth the Government put in these two sections in the first instance. If there has been any confusion or any misunderstanding, it is the Government's decisions that created it. They put in the sections. They discussed clause stand part in Committee; they went through it week in and week out, and there was no indication from the Government that there was any dissatisfaction or any raising of the standard of parental revolt in respect of the oppression of local education authorities. Indeed, I think that the confusion is in the minds of the Government themselves.

The trouble starts with their having embarked upon this charter in this way. Once you make things statutory, you introduce restriction. But having done that, you have to be fair in respect of the powers that you put in—powers in respect of parental choice and powers in respect of the right of the local authority to decide. I was very disappointed, once main, and I am afraid that this happens with Bill after Bill that we discuss. I have described the Minister before as the master of the infelicitous phrase. He gave us another today—the bogus decision; it is the local authority that is bogus, because it makes the first decision. Then there is an appeal structure which the Minister is setting up in this clause and in Schedule 1. He is now saying he has no faith in that, because local authorities will make bogus decisions.

I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, still agrees that there is co-operation between all the parties concerned, when a Government Minister speaks in this way. I do not know whether it was in his brief or whether it was off his cuff. In future he had better scrub his cuffs before he comes into this Committee. The noble Baroness was talking about a situation which exists, and I referred to it and praised it. It is traditionally Scottish. The fact is that there is no overwhelming demand for this kind of thing. There may be one or two people, but there are probably one or two people whom you will never satisfy, and who will not be satisfied with what the Government have said.

But the Government sat down with the local authorities, hammered it out and said "This is all right" and they were quite satisfied with it. I was satisfied with it, local authorities were satisfied with it and, except for one or two, parents were satisfied with it. So the Government made a change. It is unfair to castigate local authorities for making bogus decisions. It is just not true. The figures for Lothian, which I quoted on Second Reading, do not justify that. If there was a deterioriation in the circumstances, the fact is that the Secretary of State approved a transfer scheme—I do not know whether or not he consulted the Minister of State—in the month of April, three months ago. I have it here, but I do not want to delay the Committee by reading it all. He was so satisfied with the scheme that he approved it, with modification, as is his right. Then the Government come along with this kind of thing. The speech insults all local authorities by talking about bogus decisions. We come down to the position that the Government have used this as a let-out.

Any Act of Parliament is subject to interpretation by the courts and the right of appeal to the sheriff was always there in Clause 1. He himself could have made his judgment about the rightness or wrongness of the maxima laid down. But, at least, it was a guide, not only in relation to transfer schemes, but also in relation to forward planning and to where a local authority is going to close a school or to get rid of accommodation that is useless.

We see it with secondary schools all over Scotland. They want to be able to get rid of useless accommodation, but they will not be able to do so, if a parent comes along after they have suggested maxima, which are related to getting rid of accommodation which should be wiped out, and says "You have got a hut there and you can use that." It is not a question of making changes in respect of accommodation; it is making changes to get rid of accommodation and to rationalise the scheme, now that they have the opportunity; and now that they have the opportunity there is more freedom in relation to parental choice. These are the facts. The Government have got it muddled and are being unfair to local authorities.

I am afraid that I am not at all satisfied with the Government's justification of what they have done. There is no explanation as to why they did not consult local authorities—who had already agreed this—when they went down to the other place on the Report stage and made this change. I hope that I shall have the support of quite a number of your Lordships in the Lobbies, to make the Bill what it was when the Government first printed it and set out this power.

moved Amendment No. 3:

I wonder whether I may ask one further question before the Minister replies. In what form is this information to be given? Is it going to be in a brochure for each school? Who is to pay for that: is it to be the school or the authority? It might come to quite a considerable sum. I should be glad to have answers to those questions.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ross, for raising this matter. Of course, my right honourable friend's letter which was dated 8th April accompanied a decision on the transfer scheme which had been the subject of an intense debate and a great deal of negotiation as between Lothian and the Scottish Education Department. It is only indirectly connected with this particular provision.

The Government have made it clear all along that, in order to exercise a reasoned choice of school, parents will need to have certain information made available on the general educational arrangements of authorities and on individual schools, and the purpose of this particular new subsection (3)(c) is to enable the Secretary of State to prescribe in regulations the kind of information to be made available to parents to assist their decision. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has published a consultative paper which sets out proposals for regulations on information to be made available to parents. Of course, a number of schools already publish such information, sometimes in the form of quite an intensive brochure and that is naturally done at the expense of the local authority.

When my right honourable friend drew up his proposals he sought, on the one hand, to provide for the reasonable needs of parents, and on the other hand, to keep to a minimum the possible additional burden on education authorities. Naturally enough, the proposals have been criticised by local authorities on the ground that they laid down too much detail; and on the other hand by representatives of parents, who have asked that additional items should be added. My right honourable friend therefore has the task of giving careful consideration to all the comments which he has received. The fact that some bodies think that the proposals go too far and others think that they do not go far enough seems to suggest that the balance is probably about right although there may well be room for improvement in the detail.

The noble Lord, Lord Ross, asked—or at any rate implied—whether this was not a matter which could be left to the discretion of the education authorities as opposed to being the subject of a paragraph in a subsection of the Bill. The Government take the view that it is essential to the proper operation of these new provisions in Clause 1 of this Bill that parents throughout the country should have a right to the same information about the general arrangements made by the authority and about individual schools. There will be room for schools to put their own individual gloss on the material they produce, but to prevent misleading comparisons the basic facts they incorporate should cover the same items in each case and this the regulations will achieve.

So far as the timing of all this is concerned, although we think it is essential that the Secretary of State should have power to prescribe in regulations information which is to be made available to parents, we do not intend to be unreasonable in what we ask authorities to do. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have expressed their concern to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State about the difficulty of preparing all the information set out in his consultative paper in time to have it available early in 1982.

Ideally the information should of course be available then, since it is still my right honourable friend's intention—subject always to the further progress of the Bill through this House and its enactment in due course—to bring the provisions of the Bill with regard to placing requests and the right to appeal if those requests are refused, into operation by February and March 1982 respectively, in time for the start of the procedure for allocating places for the 1982–83 school session. Nevertheless, my right honourable friend has accepted that authorities would have difficulty in implementing at one and the same time the new requirements with regard to booklets of general information for parents, brochures on individual schools, and so on.

The Scottish Education Department have, therefore, informed COSLA, today I think, that the major part of the requirements relating to information for parents will not be brought into operation until January 1983. I hope that this will allay at any rate part of the concern. So far as the detail of the requirement is concerned, the type of information which will be provided, the Government will study COSLA's comments with care before the regulations are made in due course. In so far as the proposed requirements merely reflect existing good practice in many areas, much of the information parents may want is already available, and I hope that wherever possible it will be given to those who ask for it, even though there will be no statutory obligation to provide it in the initial year of the operation of the new procedure.

I think no one could deny that in this particular instance the Government have paid and are continuing to pay most careful attention to the views which have been expressed and no doubt will continue to be expressed by the convention. I would hope, therefore, that the Committee would feel satisfied that there has been a due meeting of minds so far as the Government and COSLA are concerned, at least on this ground. So far as the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady David, is concerned, I hope I have answered her as to content. As to cost, there will be no change from the present arrangements.

In other words, the cost will be met in the usual way, through the rate support grant, to the extent of whatever the particular local authority receives. It may be anything from 60 per cent. to maybe, in the Orkneys and Shetlands, about 95 per cent., which still leaves the local authority to find 5 per cent. The noble Earl will be aware that at the present time there is considerable pressure being exercised by the Secretary of State on local authorities to cut down the amount of money they are spending, and he should be very conscious indeed that here, within this section, is a demand on the local authorities to spend money. The noble Earl says it is not going to be applicable until January 1983, which means it would then be available for the 1983–84 intake of children. So parents are going to be denied the benefits of this great new charter—which, as I suggested earlier, is quite unnecessary, but if we are going to have it, let us look at it—for another three or four years or so.

The noble Earl says the Government do not intend to be unreasonable. With all due respect, we have no guidance on that because he has not told us anything. He told us that there had been discussions with COSLA in respect of the proposal. Well, we knew that. Those discussions, I thought, had finished. In many cases, the Government, having discussed with COSLA, having come to agreement, changed the matter in another place in respect of the last amendment. But now the noble Earl says, "we shall not be unreasonable". Can we trust the Government in respect of being unreasonable or otherwise? Certainly there are many people who feel that, at the present time, in respect of pressures on local authorities to reduce expenditure, the Government are already unreasonable. To come along now with another scheme that is going to cost them money, with no guarantee that they are going to get increased amounts of money to meet that cost—a scheme which the Government are going to say must be carried out, is itself unreasonable.

The noble Earl has not given us any indication at all of what the details are. He talked about brochures and booklets, all of which cost money, all of which the local education authorities cannot readily provide. As a matter of fact, at the present time and under the pressure of the Government to reduce expenditure on education, this is the kind of thing that is being cut, desirable as it is from a parental point of view. In come the Government, and say, "This is going to be mandatory, you have got to do it. We are going to produce regulations; we are not going to give you the money or guarantee the money, but you have got to do it." If they try to raise the rates, the Minister will use his draconian powers under the last Local Government Act which was passed a month ago to ensure that they cannot put the rates up.

Local government in Scotland is becoming quite chaotic by the muddling meddling of this Government. These powers and the suggestion put in here are quite reasonable, but there is nothing reasonable in the lack of co-operation, which it has come to, between the Government and the local authorities in respect of paying for desirable activities. I am afraid that this is far from satisfactory. Can the Minister take another opportunity of justifying to us the kind of details he feels are essential? I spoke about examinations and examination results. I can assure him there are certain authorities in Scotland who see this great new charter as something with which they are going to hammer the local authorites and hammer certain schools, and create unpopular schools and show how others are so wonderful, which could be done by issuing misleading information.

I want to know what kind of thing is going to be in the mandatory information that local authorities or schools have to supply. Can the noble Earl tell me clearly what is the nature of the information that is to be made general and give an estimate of the cost of that? Can he give details about the kind of information a particular school has to supply and what is likely to be the cost of that?—because I can assure him that, so far as I know, headmasters at the present time are considerably restricted in respect of the expenditures they can incur applicable to their own particular school. If the noble Earl can give me that information I shall be very grateful.

I am sure the noble Lord would not expect me to go into the details of what has yet to be worked out. As I have tried to say this is a matter upon which there is quite intense controversy as between those on the one hand, who say that the proposals in the consultative paper are far too wide, and those, on the other hand, who say that they are rather too narrow. The Government have to steer a course doing the best they can between the differing points of view.

I think, if I may say so, that it is possible to make rather heavy weather of this. The noble Lord, with his vast experience, will know the sort of brochures. That was the noble Baroness's word and I am not sure I like it too much, but I cannot think of a better one; I think "information pamphlet" would probably be a better phrase. I have just got to hand the rather attractively produced Rector's Report, as it is called, of the Garnock Academy for the session 1980–81, which lists the school in general, the area, details of the staff/parent liaison, the curriculum, organisational matters, external examinations, extra-curricular activities, rules for visitors and miscellaneous. I am just quoting from the contents page near the front. It is, indeed, 29 pages of excellently produced, but not expensively produced, information material. May I say as extra consolation—if that is the right word—for the noble Lord, Lord Ross, that the Financial Memorandum in paragraph 1 makes it plain that, in fact, additional provision has been made for the additional expenditure which will fall on education authorities on producing the information which will be mandatory by virtue of this subsection.

I should like to think that this is a sensible provision which we are including. If we are to have parental choice—and I think that almost everybody in the Committee would agree that that is an excellent provision —and if we are to tidy up the law, so to speak, and make it uniform throughout Scotland, it is obvious that parents must be given approximately the same sort of information and the same amount of information whether they live in Lerwick or Gatehouse-of-Fleet. This is the type of way, taking due consultation that we hope to achieve it. I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Lord will see fit to withdraw his amendment.

No, I am afraid that I cannot do so. The Government say that they are steering a narrow course and they talk about heavy weather, but they have not told us anything. They have told us that there is controversy over this matter, but discussions are still continuing and the Government have not made up their mind. It is a bit much for the Government to ask for powers and to ask for the trust and confidence of this House, or any other House, in respect of education matters in Scotland in respect of which they have no majority and no mandate and say, "Leave it to us, we are steering a narrow course. We must not make heavy weather of it".

I am not satisfied at all about the Government's activities in respect of this matter. I thought that I would receive a reasonable answer. It is no good coming along and suggesting that what they do in the Garnock Academy, which I know very well, and which I applaud, is their justification. With all due respect, the noble Earl should have told us about the schools that produce nothing, not about the ones that are doing something satisfactorily. After all, once they get going in respect of this it may well be that the Director of the Garnock Academy will not have the money to produce this well-produced, efficiently produced and not too expensively produced report at the end of the session. No, I am not satisfied about this at all, and I think that the Government could have gone a bit further in informing the Committee. I must press my amendment to a Division.

moved Amendment No. 4:

Page 7, leave out lines 19 to 21 and insert ("the Secretary of State").

First, I should like to deal with the personality part of this. Of course, junior Ministers in the Scottish Office are indeed mortal; some Secretaries of State run through more junior Ministers than others. I think it depends on how they are treated. I am not quite sure what the record of the noble Lord, Lord Ross, in this direction happens to be. I rather detected the wish being the father of the thought in this connection, but I hope that I was wrong about that.

No, the grandfather!

The noble Lord founded his argument on two bases. I think that he was longing to say that the sheriff was not an appropriate person to hear these appeals. But not least because of the presence of his noble friend Lord Mishcon behind him, and the presence of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern beside me on the Front Bench, I do not think that he quite dared to. But, again, if it is his unspoken wish in this connection, I must say to him that my contention and that of the Government in this particular instance—and we are talking about a second stage of appeal where the parents have, as it were, been turned down by the education authority and by the appeal committee—is that it is peculiarly proper that, in fact, a sheriff should entertain this form of appeal. The parents will be frustrated and, after the appeal committee, they have no other recourse unless—as they can at the moment—they withhold their child from attending school until the authority serves an attendance order, and then they can be summonsed before the sheriff anyway. I hope that the noble Lord will agree that to that extent—however we may disagree about the mechanics of the operation—the present arrangements will be an improvement, in that damage to a child's education may well be caused by sometimes prolonged absence from school while these things are worked out.

I would argue that a sheriff is an entirely suitable and appropriate person to deal with these appeals. He has in the course of his duties many cases of a family nature, as they are now called, concerned for instance with custody of the children of the family, and he is well able to weigh up representations as to the interests of the child, as to the parents' wishes, as to the administrative difficulties which those wishes might cause, and the financial problems which might be caused to the authority in giving way to the parental wishes.

Naturally one hopes that there will be very few of these appeals to the sheriff, and one hopes that parents will be satisfied that their cases have been properly heard and are fairly dealt with by the appeal committees. But I myself, and indeed the Government, have every confidence in the sheriff's competence to deal with those few cases where parents want to pursue matters to a second stage of appeal. May I answer a small point which the noble Lord, Lord Ross, made? Yes, of course, legal aid will be available to parents if all their circumstances meet the necessary requirements.

Now I want to turn the coin over, and I hope demonstrate that the Secretary of State really would not be an appropriate appellate body in matters of this kind. The noble Lord, Lord Ross, if I may say this in parenthesis, said that he would be wholly satisfied if the Secretary of State was, as it were, the final arbiter in a matter of this nature. I wonder whether in fact his honourable friends in another place would agree with him in their comments which they made to the particular junior Minister who happens to deal with education in Scotland and who, in effect, within his competence under the Secretary of State, would deal with this sort of appeal.

The Secretary of State has never had any involvement in these kind of disputes concerning which school a child should attend. I do not think it would be at all easy to set up the machinery, nor indeed would it be appropriate to involve him at this juncture. The sheriff in effect will have to hear oral evidence. The matters probably will concern local issues involving the highly individual circumstances of parents and children; localised questions about particular schools, and the sort of education that a particular school provides. Assessments would have to be made of the reasons given by parents for their choice of school; the ground of refusal given by the authority, and the overall circumstances of the case.

I must not pique the noble Lord, Lord Ross, any further than I have already this afternoon, but one of the things which the sheriff will have to weigh up is how valid the grounds of refusal by the education authority may be. The likelihood is almost certainly that oral evidence will be required, and the sheriff can make use of existing practices and existing expertise. For both these reasons, first that I believe that sheriffs are peculiarly well equipped both mentally and in their capacity as a sheriff to hear these cases, and, secondly, because I do not think that the Secretary of State has either the facilities or should have a locus in this particular instance, I must ask the noble Lord on reflection to withdraw this amendment and the amendments which are identical in form. If he does not, I hope the Committee will agree with me and decide accordingly.

I was interested in what the Minister had to say about my off-the-cuff reference to junior Ministers and mortality. He will be disappointed to know that mine were also well treated; that even those who served me in 1964 are all alive and well. I am afraid that cannot be said for all the Under-Secretaries of State who served Conservative Ministers. I remember at least two old friends of mine dying in office. But I will not trouble the Minister of State with these morbid details of Gil Leyburn and Dick Brooman-White and others. Let no one think that the Secretary of State for Scotland has the easiest of jobs, but it is certainly sometimes much more difficult to serve under one and see legislation through, and I really took exception to the reference made to the present Under-Secreary of State in charge of education. Political matters apart, I think that the noble Earl should not have made that oblique reference that people would not be satisfied that he was handling matters in respect of appeals.

The noble Earl suggested that I should think about this again. I have thought about this. I remember a case where parents took matters to a sheriff court in relation to the placing of a child. I can also remember the amount of publicity that was given in the local papers. It was very unfair indeed. The parent was following out what were his rights. But the publicity he got, the publicity the child got, did not do that person any good. He was in a professional capacity, and as a matter of fact he left Kilmarnock very soon after. He is a friend of mine, and I still know him well.

My feeling started from that time, that where you have a child involved in an appeal in respect of a school, it is far better to be held in the confidential area first of the appeal committee set up under this Bill, or as it was already there approved by the Secretary of State; and then certainly not, if there must be another appeal, to the sheriff. It is at that point that you get local publicity, and local publicity on a point like this can be embarrassing and harmful in respect of the attitude taken up by the public, and it may well be by local newspapers, and all that arises from that. I have thought about it, and it is because I have thought about it that I came to the conclusion that this could be done, and should be done, by the Secretary of State.

It is done in other instances by the Secretary of State. In fact we shall be coming to it in the course of this Bill, because appeal to the Secretary of State comes in later on in respect of special educational needs, although certainly in the placing of the school once again it goes to the sheriff. I shall be back on the same point when we come to that matter. The noble Earl suggests that it is the wrong thing in respect of which the Secretary of State should come in. Who is it who is drawing up the regulations? Who is it who has laid down the grounds on which the parent should be refused the specified school placement for the child? It is the Secretary of State.

Then who better knows what he intended, both in language and in spirit, as to whether or not it has been right and fair? Who is it who has taken out the maxima that was enshrined in the statute? It was the Secretary of State and his advisers. Therefore, he should know exactly whether the local authority are being sufficiently flexible in relation to the circumstances. He has the inspectors of schools. Remember, inspectors of schools in Scotland come under the Secretary of State; in England they come under the local education authority. We have a more centralised system in Scotland, so from that point of view all the information can be with the Secretary of State in quite a short time, and he with his advisers can take the necessary decision.

When I think of all the other decisions a Secretary of State has to make, I assure the noble Earl that this would not be the most onerous. I do not anticipate, under the present procedures or under the procedures as they will be when Clause 1 passes into legislative form, that there will be all that many cases, and I am sure that the Scottish Office and the Secretary of State could adequately deal with them. It is not the junior Minister but the Secretary of State who carries the can, so let us not have any remarks about not being happy with a particular Member of Parliament who happens presently to be an Under-Secretary dealing with this matter. I should be quite happy to leave it with him, because he will be properly advised; I know most of the civil servants at the Scottish Office and I have always had the highest regard for them. Indeed, I would say that the quality of civil servants in Scotland is very much higher than elsewhere; we draw on the cream, not from English public schools but from Scottish public schools, which are really public, and we are proud of that.

As for the Secretary of State not having any locus in this matter, if there is one man who should have locus and concern here, concern to see that right is done, it is the Secretary of State. In my view he is the right man, and the sheriff is very much the wrong one. Not that the sheriff could not come to an objective decision; it may be that the sheriff is not familiar with all the local circumstances. Mainly from the point of view of the effect on the parent and the child from the attendant publicity that will always occur if this matter goes to the sheriff court, it should not go to the sheriff court but should be settled in the way which has far more confidentiality and less likely embarrassment for the parent and child, and indeed for the local authority.

Will the Minister think again about this? I take the matter very seriously. I do not know whether it was raised in another place, and if it is said that it is a bee in my bonnet, then I assure the Committee that that is not because I have anything against sheriffs. I knew most of them, and I have the highest regard for them, but I think this educational matter should be dealt with within the educational structure, from Secretary of State down to education authority. If the Minister is not prepared to say he will think about it again, I am afraid I shall have to press it to a Division.

The temptation is always there to say, "Let us move on. I will go away and think about it", but this matter has been considered and thought about very extensively by the Government. It is the overriding policy of this Government to relax the Secretary of State's control over local authority affairs, and therefore even to consider the noble Lord's suggestion in this matter would be contrary to that policy. Beside which, I think the sheriff is the better man to decide at this juncture what could be rather difficult family considerations. Accordingly, I should be misleading the noble Lord if I were to say I would take the matter away and consider it again.

There is another aspect of the matter on which the Minister might usefully reflect. I resisted the temptation to meet any of the arguments presented in support of his amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, because I thought the amendment was entirely misconceived. Indeed, I thought the noble Lord was completely wrong—I will not develop the argument because in my view it is self-evident—in suggesting that it was more appropriate that the decision on an appeal from the committee should go to the Secretary of State rather than to the sheriff.

However, the noble Lord made one good point about the effect of publicity on the children and parents. I should have thought it would be a simple matter to provide by regulation, under the Sheriff Court Rules, that these hearings should be in private. The Minister might like to reflect on that possibility to meet the only point of the arguments adduced by the noble Lord, Lord Ross, which had the slightest validity at all.

I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, in that suggestion. As the Committee will know, I recently presided over a Royal Commission investigating legal services in Scotland. Something that was very much impressed on us by one of our colleagues, who happens now to be the chairman of the Scottish Law Commission but who then was a judge, Lord Maxwell, was how, in considering divorce cases in particular, judges are more and more taking the view that the important parties are the children. I apologise for referring to what was in our recommendations, but we were very much impressed by what he said about the harmful effects of publicity; and it was obvious from what my noble friend Lord Ross said that he was animated more by avoiding harmful effects, both to children and to parents, in his suggestion that the Secretary of State was the better person to deal with this matter. As Lord Wilson said, there is a procedure by which these cases can be handled privately—I suppose by the sheriff in chambers—and if the Minister would undertake to follow Lord Wilson's suggestion, that would deal effectively with one of the points my noble friend made.

While we should not forget the harmful effects that publicity can have on the child, nor should we forget the good effects publicity can have on education committees, particularly those which are absolutely sure of their own virtue. Therefore, publicity need not always be harmful. On the contrary, the fact of airing something in court often does more good for the future of other children than the actual decision. Indeed, education is now so highly charged with political content that it appears to me that the sheriff in this case is a suitable person to hear the appeals.

I do not object to publicity being given to the decision of the sheriff, and if it was adverse to the local authority then the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, would be made. The harm is done when it involves individuals. While there can be no publicity—because it is easy enough to determine, as in divorce cases, that the children and parents shall not be named in court—if it is in open court one does not know how many people will be present. I do not think any harm would be done in publicising the decision, particularly if the sheriff wants to be critical of the local authority, but that is not a necessary part of it if, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, seems to wish, the whole thing were dealt with in public.

I support the Government on this issue. It is a long time since I was closely associated with the Scottish Office and the Secretary of State, although there was a time in my life when I was married to a Secretary of State, and never in my life have I seen anyone who has more matters referred to him. I cannot imagine not wanting to cast off some of the work covered in the phrase "referred to the Secretary of State". The Secretary of State has to adjudicate on, and express opinions about, an enormously wide range of subjects, and I should have thought that it would be marvellous to cast off some of the responsibilities to someone else. Undoubtedly the sheriff, if he was a local sheriff, would know the local conditions very well, and if publicity would be detrimental to the parent or child, anonymity could be preserved. I consider that in this instance the sheriff would be a very suitable person to make the final decision, and I support the Government in what they propose.

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, for raising this point, and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and other noble Lords who have spoken. The noble and learned Lord will know that under new Section 28F(3) an appeal will be dealt with as a summary application, and that means in effect that the case will be dealt with under such procedure as the sheriff thinks fit. Nevertheless, I feel that the noble and learned Lord has here a real point which we need to consider. Everyone is agreed that the welfare of the children concerned is the primary—indeed the only—consideration, and we shall have to have consultations, not least with my noble and learned friend. Perhaps by one means or another we can return to this matter at the next stage of the Bill.

There are lawyers in front of me and sheriffs behind me, and as a simple layman I am pleased that at last they have entered into the debate on education. I do not think that sheriffs are the best people to make the decisions about a child's education. I do not think that sheriffs are the most suitable people to determine matters relating to a child's age, aptitude and the rest, because it is an educational decision that is being made. Irrespective of what is in the Bill, the parents can take a point of law to the sheriff. That is fair enough. But I do not think that the sheriff is the right person to make decisions on the child's education, on what can be provided, on how the child can be helped, and on the question of whether the expense to the educational authority is reasonable or unreasonable.

Sheriffs are not at present the least employed people in Scotland. Had the noble Baroness read the gruesome reports of the number of cases at present delayed in the Sheriff Court of Glasgow she would be the last person to suggest placing more duties on the sheriffs, who, I gather, are the busiest such people in the whole of Europe. The sheriffs are not unemployed, and are not likely to be unemployed, so far as I can see. In the present situation, it is frightful to think that people would wish on the sheriffs more work—and not necessarily work that they, and they alone, can do; nor indeed are they the best people to do it.

I approve of casting off some of the burdens of the Secretary of State. There is no reason why I should not approve of that, and I have much sympathy for the present holder of the office. The Minister of State said that it was wished to relax the situation in relation to the local authorities. I would ask what was the local government Bill about? It was concerned not with relaxing the position of the Secretary of State vis-à-vis the local authority, but with the Secretary of State becoming increasingly involved in the more important matters relating to local authorities, telling them how they shall or shall not raise their rates, and what they shall do and shall not do. So, if responsibilities are to be cast off, it is a question of who they should be cast off from. The final decision could have been left to the appeal committee that hears the parents' case against the local education authority. That could have been made final, which is the situation in England. I do not necessarily say that we always follow England. It is much more likely that sooner or later England will follow what we do in Scotland, and so keep its lawyers busy.

I am not satisfied with the answer that has been given. The question of the publicity is vital. The likelihood of publicity arises from the fact that the appeals are to be to the courts. If the appeals were not to be to the courts, there would be no worry about publicity. That was my main argument. There would be no worry about publicity under my proposal. I must insist that we take this matter to a Division.

moved Amendment No. 6:

Page 7, leave out lines 35 to 38.

I can give the noble Lord one or two examples which I think will show that in fact the subsection is perfectly logical and fair in its intention. For instance, if an appeal is lodged out of time because the parent is ill, or because the child's parents are abroad during the period in question—on holiday, for instance, or working abroad—and whoever is looking after the child cannot get the necessary instructions from the parents in time to lodge the appeal within the prescribed time limit. In my experience almost all appeals to legal authorities have an escape clause so that the appellant, who may be appealing out of time but who may nevertheless not have been at fault, or even negligent, can obtain relief.

I think that is a perfectly satisfactory explanation, and we can all understand it. But here we are into the business of appellants, legal advisers and all the rest of it—just the kind of thing we should not get into in respect of a simple case of a decision about where a child should go to school. However, the Committee has decided that this is how it should be done. I have no objection to the explanation which has been given, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 11:

Page 9, line 25, after first ("the") insert ("appeal").

I am obliged to the noble Lord for a constructive suggestion. Far from the heated exchanges of another place we scrutinise legislation here with our customary calmness, and I invite noble Lords to accept this amendment.

I am grateful to the noble Earl, and I hope I have not deprived my noble friend of the only time when the Minister gives way.

May I say that I knew the Minister would give way and it would have hurt me, which is why I did not make any appeal to him.

moved Amendment No. 13:

Page 14, line 3, leave out ("an education authority") and insert ("the Secretary of State").

I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, on the great importance of notification a very early age of any disability or handicap in children, whether mental or physical handicap. That is extremely important. It is only after many years of publicity from voluntary organisations dealing with the mentally handicapped, the autistic or whatever the handicap may be, that the public are becoming aware of the great importance of finding the disability as early as possible and trying to find out, through doctors, education and so on, the best way to handle the children that are handicapped.

I do not agree that the local authority, with the education committee and the social work committee, are not the best people to do it. Speaking from my own experience, in our education area we had people—both teachers and social workers—who were continually on the alert to find out the best way of helping the severely handicapped or the children who might become worse if they were not treated early, and so on. I cannot imagine the Secretary of State being able to do it anything like so well as the local people: the local committee, the local authority, knowing the local conditions under which people live, their neighbours, and so on.

The responsibility should be put on them to find the children and then, after that, it is the responsibility of the education committee or the social work committee, as it may be, to find the right way of treating these children. I do not agree that this is a matter which should be done through some central authority. It is a job that should be done—and is done—locally, by people who know the area, the children and conditions. I support the Government in their view on this.

The noble Baroness has misunderstood what is at stake here. It is not the action to be taken in respect of the children; we are dealing only with the dissemination of information:

"It shall be the duty of an education authority to disseminate in their area information as to the importance of the early discovery…".

It is only information. May I say to the noble Baroness that things have changed since she was on a local authority. There may well have been a school medical service then.

This is why I suggest the importance from the information point of view of letting people know, letting parents know; and they can only get to know through a variety of organisations of people who are in touch with the families. It should not be left purely to the local education authority; it should be a matter that the Secretary of State should take up, and so on.

The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong, but we have got an education unit—that is another thing that this bright Government have probably got rid of in order to save a few pounds or so. To my mind, it should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State, as it is in many other cases, to disseminate information. He has a wonderful information office: I was amazed at the amount of money that office managed to build up in the period between 1970 and 1974 when there was a lapse—but we can forgive the public—and there was a change of Secretary of State. But the one thing they did build up in expenditure when they were cutting other things was the information service, the cost of films and all the rest of it. They have the people and they can probably do it far, far better than leaving it to the local education authorities.

I think the noble Baroness will know the pressure that the local education authorities are under at the present time through rate support grant. The Government can lay down priorities as to how that rate support grant is spent. They provide the money and then the priorities in respect of where cuts are made, and where cuts are made they are made by the local education authorities. What I am afraid of is that local education authorities will not embark on this expenditure or, if they do, will quickly cut it; but if the duty is laid on the Secretary of State for Scotland he will need to carry it out as one of his prime responsibilities.

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. It may be that I am not as up-to-date as I ought to be, but the general principle that it is the local people and the local authority who can both disseminate information and know where the information should go is, I think, still the most important thing.

I was interested to hear the reasons advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Ross, as to why he seeks to transfer to the Secretary of State a duty which is long established, as he himself will know. This clause in fact restates, though with distinct differences, Section 60(2) of the 1980 Act. In fact this is a duty which has rested with the education authorities since 1945 and it reflects the need and the opportunities, which my noble friend Lady Elliot has emphasised, for local communication.

The Government are not aware of any dissatisfaction with the location of this duty and the way it has been carried out. There was no suggestion made that the duty should be transferred to the Secretary of State by the Warnock Committee, for instance; and in the widespread consultation processes that have followed that report and during these legislative proposals which have been discussed, again there have been no suggestions made that there should be any transfer of this nature. Both directly and in association with other agencies such as health boards and voluntary bodies, we believe that education authorities can get the message across to individual parents much more readily than in fact the Secretary of State can. They can display the basic information needed by worried parents; they can make that information available locally and can tell such people where to seek help for their child. We do not believe it would be appropriate to withdraw those requirements which have been working so well for so long at this stage.

Of course central Government has a part to play. They can promote a general awareness of the importance of early educational intervention, and in the guidance which he will issue on the discovery and assessment of special educational need, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will certainly emphasise the part to be played in all this by public services concerned with children's welfare. But that would be no substitution for the direct communication with parents which the Bill requires education authorities to continue and which we think should continue.

The noble Lord, Lord Ross, mentioned a special education unit—yes, I am sure the noble Lord realises that it is the Health Education Unit—and this kind of role is not a job for that unit, as I am sure he appreciates. If the Secretary of State were to take on this duty he would also have to take on extra staff. But that is by the way and is perhaps just clearing up a point of misunderstanding. So far as the noble Lord, Lord Ross, is concerned, it does not detract from the argument, and I hope that on reflection he will agree that it would be better to leave matters as they stand.

No, I am not entirely satisfied. We have experience of the Health Education Unit and the campaigns that from time to time they carry out throughout Scotland. It would be all very well if we were satisfied that the job is being properly carried out at the moment; but from the fact that we put this amendment down here at the present time and that the whole problem has been highlighted by Warnock, makes it, I think, more conceivable to ensure that the job is done and the responsibility left with the Secretary of State. Of course there could be national campaigns in respect of the information, but part of that is to inform the local education authority what they have got to do, and also to tell the local health authority what they have to do.

Certainly at nursery school age and in primary schools, the teachers and the education service are in touch with respect of the parents and the children and see what special educational needs are required for a child; but in the ages before that it is not the education authority which is responsible or which could be in direct touch. It is much more likely to be the social worker, the health visitor or the local general practitioner. It goes wider than education and it may well be that we have been slipping up because we have not highlighted the importance of the matter at the present time. Certainly the guidance is going to be given by the Secretary of State—to whom? It is going to be given not to one of those agencies but to the whole lot of them, I trust.

That is why I think the initial responsibility should rest with the Secretary of State. Certainly, from a parliamentary point of view we have no one to question about it. He would be responsible, though not necessarily would he do all the work. He would pass the work along to the local education areas and to the health boards and, through them, to health visitors, to nurses and to those visiting the family and, it may well be, to the general practitioners as well.

That is the purpose of my suggestion and I think it would be much more likely to be successful. Of course, the question of money would not arise. It would not be a question of priorities of the local education authorities. The duty is placed by Parliament on the Secretary of State, and he would need to be answerable to this House and to the other place for how he is conducting it. I still think that is probably the best way of doing it, especially in these present days, and if the Government are not going to think again I am afraid we will need to tread the Lobbies.

I wonder whether it would be possible to avoid treading the Lobbies. There has been a good deal of that on this Bill, and I hope that we shall divide on matters of fundamental importance. This amendment refers to an administrative device, and I am not convinced, having heard the argument, that questions of important principle arise. I am influenced, as a former member of an education committee of a local authority, by the fact that these committees are fairly close to the needs of the communities which they serve, and are probably in a better position to advise and disseminate information according to the needs of a community.

The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, has said that if we transfer this responsibility to the Secretary of State it will enable Parliament to question the Secretary of State. I presume that Parliament—although the noble Lord has much more experience than I have in this regard—questions the Secretary of State on the whole area of educational responsibility in Scotland, and it is no excuse for the Secretary of State, on any occasion, to say that a local authority is not carrying out its duty.

In Scottish local government, at the moment, we are in a very interesting phase. We are in a period when the powers of the Secretary of State and the local authorities are running into some difficulty. I should have thought that this device, which decentralises responsibility, might have appealed to the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, rather than the centralisation of authority in St. Andrew's House. I appeal to him to accept the explanation given and to save us from treading the Lobbies.

That is a very touching appeal from my noble friend. But I can assure him—and he will be the first person to appreciate it—that education authorities take different views of their responsibilities. As you go through Scotland, you find that what appeals to one local authority as important does not have a similar appeal to another local authority. If you appreciate the importance of this for, say, a child in Orkney, the Western Isles, the Borders, Glasgow, Edinburgh or anywhere else, you want to make sure that something as important as this is not left to the whims of local authorities.

This, to me, is a matter of principle. We are starting new ground. Hopefully, all we are doing is providing the framework. We are not providing the money. We are not even given the kind of assurances about the use of existing monies that were given by the Secretary of State for Education in England and Wales. We in Scotland have already been told that no more money will be available for this great new charter to meet the special educational needs of unfortunate children. I want to get it right. I do not want to leave it to individual local authorities to decide "We are going to spend money on this or that".

We place the responsibility on the Secretary of State and he must do it. No question of rate support grant arises with him. He gets his grant direct from the Government. You could call his record, in respect of spending money, a better one or a worse one. But, proportionately, he spends far more money than the local authorities who are dealing with education, local government and everything else. Their record in saving money is far better than the Secretary of State's. It may be that his extra expenditure is related to the extra duties placed upon him by Parliament. He cannot dodge them. I suggest that this is one of them. It means that he works through all the bodies; not just the education authority, but the health board as well.

As I suggested, it is at an important part of a child's life that you want an assessment. The health board is more in touch with the family than the education authority. That is why I suggest that it should be the Secretary of State. If we really mean to make a start and get the structure right in relation to the education of the handicapped—be they physically or mentally handicapped, or seriously or not quite so seriously handicapped—who have special educational needs, the first requirement is to get through to the parents the importance of an early assessment. It is sometimes not easy for the parents to accept that, but it must be done and it can be done only with co-operation.

The person who will achieve co-operation with all these bodies in Scotland is the Secretary of State, because he is the Minister for Health and the Minister for everything else in Scotland. He can unify the approach and can use all these agencies which he has at his command, be they health, education or anything else. It would probably not be appropriate in England, where there is a diversity of various Secretaries of State coming in. But where you get the one all-wise and all-powerful man at the top, embracing about seven different departments which each require their own Ministers in England and Wales, it is a very different matter.

We have the chance to do it right in Scotland. Let us take the chance to do it right. I think that it is a matter of greater principle than my noble friend believes, and I hope he appreciates that I am not nitpicking about this. I am concerned about getting the right structure and getting the advance. All we are getting now is the structure. Let the structure be right. If we cannot do all the other things that we want to do in respect of educational needs, we can surely get started with the business of getting the assessment and getting the proper dissemination of information.