behind clause 1 there is the conception of fairness and justice between child and child . our amendment merely carries this conception of justice further . we want it to obtain between non-graduates and non-graduates under different local authorities , and between the students who come under clause 1 and those under clause 2 . this underlines what my hon friend the member for Flint , East ( Mrs White ) has said about grants . the Minister has said nothing about the incomes scale on which grants under this clause are to be assessed . surely in the grants made to students once the local authority has said they ought to pursue their further education , there can be no defensible variations between one local authority and another . we used to hear talk about major and minor awards , and I thought we had wiped out that foolish stratification . this clause if unamended permits the widest variation even in the amount of grants . I think that this is the most important point which has so far emerged in this debate , and I regret that the parliamentary Secretary has said nothing about it . I have often had to fight a battle for a student who has been refused a grant by a local education authority and in the best cases both the local authority and myself have gone to the Minister . we have received advice and information from the ministry and that has meant usually that either the local authority has accepted ministerial advice if the authority had been wrong or I have accepted it if I was wrong . the ministry is in a position to know more than even the best local education authority . that is the pattern we are now seeking to establish in legislation . under the permissive powers , however , in the worst cases when the ministry was right and the M.P was right the local authority could still dig its heels in and say that whatever the ministry said it was not going to give a grant . the Minister said there are practical difficulties about implementing an amendment , and suggested it was not possible to include all the courses into the regulations . nobody would wish to write in the course of two or three lectures only to which he referred and behind which he sheltered . what we envisage in clause 2 is the same pattern as in clause 1 where we write into the regulations every criterion , everything that is possible to apply nationally . most of the courses that we are talking about there is no difficulty in defining and no difficulty in putting in the regulations . on top of that , clause 1 ( 4 ) says : without prejudice to the duty imposed by subsection ( 1 ) of this section , a local education authority shall have power to bestow an award on any person in respect of his attendance &amp;hellip; . in this clause , too , we would write in such a provision , and leave with the authority the right and privilege of being more generous than the regulations . what we are asking the Minister to do is to set out in regulations the many courses we know about which have national status and those which we might describe as having a kind of local national status . if the student is of the right calibre to pursue a course , which the ministry enacts is a worthwhile full-time course , he shall receive the same justice from Britain whatever authority he happens to have been born under . 11.15 a.m . the parliamentary Secretary said that there was nothing to worry about , that the government had looked into the position and that there were no complaints . whether the Minister is aware of it or not , the whole case for the bill is that there has been a sort of ground swell of complaints which , over the years , have become more and more insistent . there has not been justice between student and student . whatever is true about the university students with whom clause 1 deals is true about the variety of other students with whom clause 2 deals . what the hon gentleman is asking us to do is to leave everybody , except first degree students , in exactly the position they were in before the bill . I share the passionate view on this that my hon friend the member for Flint , East showed in her speech at our last meeting , and I hope that it will be possible for the committee , even now , to persuade the parliamentary Secretary to change his mind . Mrs Eirene White : I can not understand how the parliamentary Secretary can suppose that in his answer today he dealt with the matter which we have raised . we are here dealing with the whole corpus of students other than those going to universities , but all we have had from the parliamentary Secretary has been a few perfunctory remarks at the beginning of our deliberations this morning . that means that one has to go back to the beginning and spell out for the committee what it is that we are really discussing . we can not leave the situation like this . I want to quote a paragraph from the ministry circular 5/61 which is the present practice and which is now being embodied in statutory form in the bill . paragraph 9 says : applications for awards for university diploma or certificate courses . this gives a very important group of people . non-graduates taking full-time university diploma or certificate courses lasting for three years or more should receive awards in accordance with paragraph 8 ( a ) above . that is , roughly in the same way as those in clause 1 . awards for other diploma or certificate courses should be considered on their merits . that is all that is said in the circular about non-university and non-teacher training college students . we are now speaking of people who are taking courses other than university degree or comparable to degree courses . this is a very important group which the circular mentions merely by saying that their cases should be considered on their merits . there is no guidance or direction from the Minister . in addition to this group of people who go to universities and who take , for example , a social science diploma , which is normally a two-year and not a three-year course , or the diploma of public administration at Oxford , which is also a two-year and not a three-year course , there are tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of students taking full-time courses at technical colleges . all those are being dismissed by the Minister . if hon members have any doubts about this , I refer them to the present practice . my hon friend the member for Southampton , Itchen ( Dr King ) said he thought that minor awards had been abolished . I am sorry to say that this is not so . certain local authorities have abolished minor awards for full-time education , but not all . London County council reached the very proper conclusion that minor awards were not suitable for full-time students . the national union of students has investigated this matter . as all hon members are aware , it issues a very useful book on grants to students which it brings up to date every year and which it sends to all education authorities , including those in the Channel Islands , and the total number of which is 149 . the union gets replies from nearly , but not quite , all of them . of those who replied to the question of what awards were given to full-time students over the age of 18 attending technical college courses not of degree or equivalent status - in other words the people with whom clause 2 deals - the union got the following replies : 67 authorities give minor awards of varying value and assessment ; 11 give major awards ; 13 give major awards dependent on qualifications ; 10 base their awards on costs ; 11 consider each case on its merits . certain authorities - I will not shame them by naming them - give no awards at all . others give assistance only with travel costs . one authority offers what it calls a home scholarship for the final year of the student &apos;s attendance at the local college . it is perfectly plain from that that the practice of authorities in dealing with students taking full-time courses at universities for less than three years , or at technical colleges or at other institutions of comparable standard where the student is 18 or more at the time - and let us deal only with that group for the moment - varies very widely . I will not now deal with the little difficulty , which the parliamentary Secretary mentioned , about the person who goes for only a few lectures , or who takes up something which is obviously a hobby . I am now dealing with those taking full-time courses for a considerable period - say , a minimum of one academic year . many would be taking courses for two years and those at technical colleges perhaps for much longer . those are full-time students pursuing serious studies . the practice among authorities obviously varies , not only on the question of the parental means scale , with which I dealt fairly emphatically last week and which the parliamentary Secretary did not even mention , not only in the way they assess parental incomes , but in the amounts which they give . I have with me information which has been collected by the national union of students and I will quote a few of the replies which it received last year . this concerns grants current in the academic year 1961-62 for full-time students over the age of 18 and attending full-time at technical colleges , taking courses which are not for a degree or of comparable status . these figures may be subject to some parental means test , but we are not arguing about that at the moment . the maximum grant which an authority awards to students who qualify for full grant is &amp;pound;180 , plus travel , in Kent ; &amp;pound;80 in Devon ; &amp;pound;125 in West Ham ; &amp;pound;115 , plus travel in West Hartlepools ; &amp;pound;163 in Warwickshire ; there is no day grant in Pembrokeshire if the student is living at home , but there is for those taking a residential course ; the figure is &amp;pound;120 in Cardiff . in all of those cases tuition fees are paid by the authority , but that practice is not universal . my own authority of Flint , I am sorry to say , does not pay tuition fees . one has to apply , but one is lucky if one gets tuition fees paid . those taking full-time courses at technical colleges and living away from home - and this happens in many parts of the country where children from rural areas have to go into residence - again have fantastic discrepancies in the amounts which their authorities are prepared to award to them . for the same group of authorities the residential maxima are : &amp;pound;260 in Kent ; between &amp;pound;114 and &amp;pound;180 in Devon ; &amp;pound;185 in West Ham ; &amp;pound;175 plus travel in West Hartlepools ; &amp;pound;218 in Warwickshire ; &amp;pound;183 in Pembrokeshire ; &amp;pound;210 in Cardiff . what possible justice is there in having all those full-time students at technical colleges treated like that ? what possible defence is there for treating university students under clause 1 as they are treated and technical college students under clause 2 in another way ? we may have something to say about discretion being given for part-time students , or for those taking what might be called hobby courses in further education establishments , but there is no conceivable ground on which the Minister can argue that he can do for university students what he is proposing to do while refusing to do it for full-time technical college students , or university students taking a course of less than three years &apos; duration . the parliamentary Secretary has only one excuse and it is that he is afraid to pay the cost . as he well knows we have had a letter from local authorities saying that by clause 1 they are being made virtually the Minister &apos;s agents and that their discretion is being so much diminished that in effect they will simply administer a national service and the total expenditure in those circumstances ought to be a national charge and not paid out of the rates . 