Equality Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, ought to hear me out and think about not just what Michael Young wrote but the misinterpretations that there have been of what he said—he was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. The point is that if equality of opportunity works, you will have a society in which the hewers of wood and the drawers of water will be deprived of the opportunities of those at the top of the heap, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, says, not because the society is unfair but because they are not capable of doing anything else. Now, the things that Michael Young said about society, equality of opportunity and the meritocracy have not come to pass. They have not done so for a very good reason: the immigration to this country, which has always been a source of rejuvenation in all socio-economic classes. Michael recognised that towards the end of his life, but he could not have recognised it when he wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy. The point about this—and I think that this is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit—is that unless you have a continued drive towards what is perhaps the unattainable object of equality of outcome, equality of opportunity will prove to be divisive and will result in an unjust society. It is not that equality of opportunity by itself is wrong but that it is incomplete. The equality of outcome that this clause calls for is the natural corollary of the equality of opportunity for which a number of noble Lords have spoken this afternoon.