Equality Bill

It would be a travesty if the ambition of equality of outcome, or, indeed, equality of opportunity, were left in the mouths of spokesmen of the Opposition, whose party has done very little to promote either objective in our society—in particular the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, who takes as his target and his banner the Rochdale pioneers, which is only one example, but a very important one, of the collective ambition and work of workers in Britain, whose organisations and trade unions he did so much to attack when he was in office. He laughs. He bases his attack on grammar schools, which he says promoted equality of opportunity which enabled him eventually to come to this House. He is not alone in that. My family had scarcely heard of universities before the idea of my being at one took them by surprise. He no doubt is sitting with his brethren who come, as he put it, from Eton. One of them is trying to interrupt me from a sedentary position.