Education (Scotland) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 21 January 1969.

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Photo of Mr William Ross Mr William Ross , Kilmarnock 12:00, 21 January 1969

I do not think that that would be a helpful thing to announce at the moment. All teachers are surely aware of the importance of the decisions taken about this matter. They will, no doubt, ponder very carefully before they take action which may well influence the existence of the council. I consider the council—as the House does—a very considerable advance in relation to what the teachers in Scotland wanted at the time of the strike of 1961—greater status and a greater measure of control of entrants to their own profession. I am sure that they will not lightly throw that advance away.

Clause 24 simplifies the procedure for making Regulations under the 1962 Act. Under the existing procedure, every set of Regulations made must normally be published first in draft and sent to every education authority, and only after the lapse of 40 days, during which education authorities and any other interested person may make representations on the draft, can the Regulations be finally made. This procedure is most unusual and I know of no parallel outside Sc sh education. It tends to delay the making of Regulations unnecessarily. We propose to replace it by the normal procedure under which the Secretary of State makes Regulations without first publishing them in draft.

This change will not apply to regulations made under the Teaching Council (Scotland) Act, 1965, because we gave specific pledges at that time in relation to them. But the change does not mean that education authorities and others directly concerned will lose their present opportunity to influence the nature of any regulations which may be made. On the contrary, it will be a corollary of this change in procedure that consultation before decisions are made and regulations drafted will be the normal practice. This is the procedure under other Acts and it works well. Time does not permit me—