---

Charities Bill [HL]

I declare an interest. As I said on a previous occasion, my education at Eton was rather a waste of money. But I am a governor of the Royal Grammar School at Guildford, which is an absolutely star educational establishment. Its board of governors is made up of local businessmen, solicitors and lawyers, and the mayor of Guildford and such people, who put an enormous amount of voluntary time into it. We provide bursaries and subsidised fees for various people. Our pupil intake was made rather more narrowly based when we were taken out of the state system, where the school was open to anyone without any form of monetary hurdle to overcome. It was a great instrument of social mobility, as grammar schools were. Now we try to do that as much as we can not only by selling education to those who can afford it but also by trying our level best to provide as much as we can afford through bursaries and so forth. To upset that sort of balance in any way would be a bad thing.