Equality Bill

The Labour Party has come a very long way over the past 100 years or so. When we look back to those early days of the Labour Party, there was an enormous concentration on education, particularly in the Welsh valleys. Long before Mr Blair discovered "education, education, education", in those Welsh valleys there was a passion for education. It was seen as the way forward for youngsters growing up in rather poor socio-economic circumstances—although they did not use that expression in those days; they were more blunt about it. Education was seen as the way for those children to make their way up and enjoy some social mobility. Further north were the Rochdale pioneers. They did not spend all their time griping, whining and whingeing about the misdemeanours and the unfairness of the way that retail trade was conducted; they did something about it. They created the co-operative movement, which actually improved retailing across the board and, particularly, improved it for those in the poorest circumstances. We have come to a stage where everything has to be done by legislation. What have been the consequences in recent years? We have seen a loss of social mobility. Of course, the Bill as a whole and this clause in particular will contribute towards that loss of social mobility. I do not speak from theory but from experience. I was one of those—and there are a good many of us in this House—who was born on the wrong side of the track, and probably at the wrong time. How did I escape from that socio-economic group? It was through education. It was through the grammar schools, which gave me, not the Bill’s entirely false promise of equality of outcome, but an equality of opportunity. The more that we strive for an equality of outcome, the worse matters will get. What a pity that we do not already have former Prime Minister Blair in the House. He could tell us a thing or two about it. He sprang from very difficult circumstances. His family was so poor that he could not be sent to Eton, but had to make do instead with the best public school in Scotland. From those unpromising circumstances, he has given us all an enormous lesson in how to get rich. He is now, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, "stinking rich"—and I know on which of those two words I put the emphasis. What a pity that he is not here to tell us how to do it. I know that some of it comes from his great success as a Prime Minister. He was, after all, a wartime Prime Minister for longer than Winston Churchill; and he has profited rather more from it, too. I support absolutely my noble friend's amendment, and will support her, too, by voting against this pernicious, anti-libertarian and totally harmful clause.