Finance Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 5 June 1962.

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The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) in his admirable speech was that it would not be only by this method that the Exchequer would be subsidising independent schools. We all know that there are other methods by which already the Exchequer is subsidising independent schools. There are various methods, not only through individual covenants, but payments by industrial firms for the fees of the children of employees and fringe benefits, by very large contributions to scientific equipment, laboratories and so on, to which the big industrial firms subscribe. In one way and another, indirectly, there is a good deal of public money already going into these schools. If it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby suggested, to be more than half, I think that we may very well ask, at a period when we are approaching such an acute teacher shortage, what business these schools have to take teachers ex quota, when the whole system of publicly maintained schools is on a very strict quota system for teachers.