BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 04.06.00

Interview: MARGARET BECKETT, Leader of the House of Commons.

Argues that the Government's slogan, Opportunity for All, means a real expansion of opportunity for the disadvataged.



JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first, in the spirit of opportunities for all, let's look at what the Government has in mind for us. Gordon Brown really stirred things up when he attacked an Oxford College because it did not admit one particular young woman. He in turn was roundly condemned by the College and many others for getting it wrong. The debates since then have grown and grown, and the government shows no sign of wanting to stop them. On the contrary, Mr. Brown returned to the attack in an article he wrote for the Times yesterday and John Prescott put in his two-pennyworth in the Independent on Sunday this morning. But having set off down this path has the government any real idea where it will end. Margaret Beckett is the Leader of the House of Commons - it's been a bit of a mistake, hasn't it, Mrs. Beckett? MARGARET BECKETT, MP: Oh no, I don't think so at all, we've been working for some time along the line and along these themes of creating opportunity and also about taking barriers out of people's way, that's something that I hope people would want and expect a Labour Government to do. HUMPHRYS: But to use a specific case of a young woman who didn't get into a particular college? BECKETT: Well, I think everyone now wants to move on, because Laura Spence has her 'A' Levels to do...... HUMPHRYS: .....I bet you do, because it was mistake. BECKETT: No, no, no, no, it wasn't a mistake, because of course, what the case of Laura Spence did, and it was right in the first place to come in on the back of that case, but it would be wrong to go on when she's got her own concerns and her own life to lead, but what she showed...what she highlighted, was a very, very worrying set of evidence, not coming from the government, but from organisations like the Sutton Trust, that people with the same qualifications, who go to state schools, don't get the same opportunities to go into our universities, and that's something, it's better than it used to be, but it needs to be better still, and that's part of creating opportunity and taking barriers out of the way. HUMPHRYS: But the reason I am suggesting to you that it was a mistake is the using a, particular individual, a single girl, who might or might not have got into college under her own steam anyway, who didn't, you know, others got in when she didn't get in, and nobody's been prepared to say, well, somebody else should have lost their place or for her to go in, and we've had all that argument and it's obscured the debate, hasn't it? BECKETT: Well, no I don't think it has, and I think it would be a pity if it did, because that's just one example and thing that is very, very clear is that there are lots of young people out there whose qualifications entitle them on merit to opportunities that at present they are not getting. I accept that some of those in Oxford who have been upset and say, oh but we are trying to address this, people are doing more. But the thing I've noticed that's sort of running through a lot of the comment on it that's coming from the universities is that they are still putting so much of the emphasis on the individual or the school and talking about the schools, building up their contacts and networking and so on, and yes, alright, there may be something to be said for some of that but I am not sure that we are still seeing enough from the universities about what they should be doing and the way that they should be going out and seeking the best talent, because on the figures, and I repeat they are not our figures, on the figures, the best talent is not always getting the opportunities it should. HUMPHRYS: We'll come back to that in a moment if I may, but the reason that I'm suggesting a mistake, that partly it was a mistake apart from the fact that one young woman got caught up in it in the way that she did, and the Chancellor got his facts wrong in the early days and all the rest of it that we all know about, it's been going on for a long time now, is that in that same week that Mr. Brown, that Gordon Brown said look this is a scandal, a great scandal, that this college in Oxford should not have admitted this young girl, I was talking to the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who was saying, we don't want to recruit from Oxford and Cambridge and the elite universities for the Foreign Office, so, a rather peculiar tension there between the two, isn't there, who was right, do you want people to go to Oxford and Cambridge, so they can run the country and do all those things, or do you not? BECKETT: It's not just about people going to Oxford and Cambridge, it's about people having the opportunities to get high quality, higher education. And it's not just, I mean, it didn't even start with the Laura Spence case, it's... HUMPHRYS: ....didn't it? BECKETT: ....no, it's been a theme that we've been pursuing for some time, Alan Milburn's been talking about people's opportunities to go into working in the Health Service, Robin himself, as you say, has been talking about people's opportunities to get into the Civil Service, it's been....... HUMPHRYS: .....as long as they haven't been to Oxbridge, yes. BECKETT: ...it's been a continuing theme. And the thing that is very clear is that people with identical qualifications, don't get anything like the same equality of opportunity that we would all want to see, and we think that's something that you expect a government, or at least a Labour government to do something about. HUMPHRYS: Right, and you would like to get them then into these elite institutions, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, whatever. BECKETT: We would like to get more of them into higher education and yes, we'd like to see a better proportion, a fairer proportion, of those who have the same qualifications, going to our best universities. HUMPHRYS: It's a funny way that you've gone about it in that case, isn't it then, because you abolished the assisted places which helped an awful lot of youngsters from poorer backgrounds.... BECKETT: ...no it didn't... HUMPHRYS: ..well the facts show that a lot of them from poorer backgrounds who couldn't otherwise have afforded to go to those sorts of schools, clearly they couldn't have afforded to go, otherwise they wouldn't have qualified, they might then have stood a much better chance of going on because we know the number of people who go on from private schools....... BECKETT: .....I think that is a perfect example of what has been wrong with the system we have and the system we inherited from the Tories. What the Tories did was to create a system whereby a very small number of children got into that very small number of schools..... HUMPHRYS: .....children from backgrounds that you are concerned about ....... BECKETT: .....and therefore that tiny number of children got something of the opportunities without the overall system changing at all. What we've done is to use that money to create much better opportunity for all of the children, at the earliest possible years when you know, your foundation in education is laid, the most important years and what we are talking about now is expanding higher education to make sure more people have the chance to get in and to make sure that the people who are getting qualifications are judged on that basis and on their merits as individuals and not just, as too often it has been in the past, on what the contacts are, and so on, and what we are saying to higher education and to the universities is, yes, you've been doing more, and that's great, but we are clearly not doing enough, because otherwise we wouldn't see that disparity for people, who I keep repeating, have got the same qualifications. HUMPHRYS: But you didn't only get rid of the assisted places schemes, a relatively small number of people I grant you, but nonetheless people from, children from the worst-off backgrounds, you also got rid of grammar schools, you didn't like the idea..... BECKETT: .....there weren't many left. HUMPHRYS: .....well, not by the time they were finished with... BECKETT: ....and in any case.... HUMPHRYS: ....no, but I mean that was route that children took from poorer backgrounds to get into universities... BECKETT: .....no, we haven't got rid of grammar schools. And this grammar school thing is part of the assisted places approach. What it is all about is saying, you take a small number of children, and you educate them well, because that's all the country can afford. And that was the myth that successive Tory governments sold us. That was never a good idea, because you were actually not doing enough for the great bulk of children, but in today's economy, and in the nature of the world we will see in the future, where knowledge is power, and it's access to knowledge that is important for a country, not just for an individual, we have to be doing the best we can to educate everybody, and that's what the changes that we have made are about. We haven't, we've put a position in place, where in areas, the few areas where there are still remaining grammar schools, it's up to parents to decide, but that's not....... HUMPHRYS: (..interruption..) BECKETT: ...it hasn't been for years, a system for most people. HUMPHRYS: Alright, but if you're so keen then that so many of them should do what you just described, very odd to introduce tuition fees which is a terrible barrier, a terrible burden for them to clear. BECKETT: No, it really isn't. A third of people do not pay any tuition fees at all. They are the people from the lowest income households. Another third pay something towards them on a sliding scale. And it's only the people in the top third of households from the point of view of income, who actually pay for tuition fees, and if you look at the figures, it isn't true that it's discouraging people from applying, the numbers of applications are holding up, the number of applications, even from mature students are basically holding up, so what we are seeing is more people starting to take advantage of the opening up, see, don't forget that there was a cap on places under the Conservatives because the resources weren't going in. The money that is raised through tuition fees is going back into higher education to create more opportunity for more young people and that is what should be happening. HUMPHRYS: See that MORI Opinion Poll in the Mail on Sunday this morning said that two out of three people think it's quite wrong to have tuition fees, partly because of what it says about our approach to state education. BECKETT: But I think probably one of the reasons that people are nervous about tuition fees is because they believe they are keeping out large numbers of young people. That's not the evidence and as I say I think if people realised that one third of students pay no tuition fees at all and even the maintenance system, the system for repayment is now much fairer and it only kicks in when you begin term. HUMPHRYS: But they've still got to repay it. BECKETT: Well even when I was at college John, a lot of people ended university, ended college with debts and overdrafts and so on...... HUMPHRYS: Ah but that was party because... perhaps you went out on the town a great deal... BECKETT: Oh - perish the thought........ HUMPHRYS: Who knows what you did in your youth. But I mean nowadays you can't avoid it and if you speak to... I was talking the other day to a young woman, twenty three or twenty four, who left university with debts, she's got a hell of a job to pay it back, living in London, having to pay for accommodation and all the rest of it - it is a serious problem. BECKETT: But the system now..... well I mean she would have come out and her terms of her loan repayment would have been the ones set, I presume, by the previous government. What we've done is to substantially improve that so that people have much easier terms to meet, they only have to meet them.......... HUMPHRYS: ..... they've still got to pay them back...... BECKETT: Yes, they do. But I repeat, the choice is there: You either have a cap on numbers and you say we won't admit all the people who can be qualified and earn the right to a place in university because we can't provide the money or else you say, 'okay we will raise the money, we'll do it as fairly as we possibly can but then we'll make sure that that opportunity is opened to a great range of people who get the qualifications. HUMPHRYS: Alright, but those are things that have been done. The other reason why all of this was a bit of a mistake is that we're now seeing endless ministers writing in newspapers about it all and saying nothing. I mean you saw the piece perhaps by Gordon Brown in the Times yesterday - well it was a string of platitudes if you'll forgive me, there wasn't a single course of action there. John Prescott's piece in the Independent on Sunday this morning, hard to see quite what he was saying - These are our plans. What are the plans to do something about it? I mean you talk about universities going out to seek more students, well they've been doing that for donkey's years. BECKETT: Well they have been doing it to some degree, I wouldn't say for donkey's years. More recent years, they've begun to do it. I think they're still, I mean the evidence shows that they're still not doing it well enough or probably on a big enough scale. HUMPHRYS: Right, well impose quotas on them then.......... BECKETT: And these are things that the government will be addressing. You say, I don't accept your description but I accept that Gordon is talking in broad terms about what the goal is. I think right at the beginning you said 'is this just a slogan?' No it isn't a slogan. It's a gaol. It's an aim of a Labour government to create greater opportunity for everybody and not just the privileged few. HUMPHRYS: Well, now what that implies is target something which the government is frightfully keen. I think you've got about six thousand altogether right across the whole of government....... BECKETT: .....we're trying to cut that down...... HUMPHRYS: ....trying to cut it - but here's an extra one for you then isn't it because if you have a goal you must have a target because a goal is never reached if you don't have a target. You don't know whether you've reached it or not so you must have a target therefore you're going to have to tell the universities to impose some sort of quota aren't you if you're serious about it? BECKETT: No, we're not talking about quotas...... HUMPHRYS: Why not? BECKETT: What we're saying to universities is take a look at the range of people who come to you with the right qualifications and take a look at who you're actually admitting and see whether, on the evidence it looks as if you are getting it right in terms of creating the kind of opportunities you should for the kind of youngsters who need to have the chance to study at the institutions which will give them training for life. (both speaking at once) No doubt as we get into the months ahead and as we see the results emerging from the present review of spending that's coming forward and the programmes for the next two or three years, it may well be that there will be more flesh put on those bones but it's the bones that matter because it's the goal and the aim that matters and that I think is both important for Britain and I think it's something people would expect a Labour government to stand for. HUMPHRYS: So a bit more money down the line there somewhere to.........? BECKETT: Well we're already putting in more resources and we're putting it in precisely to those areas where we think we're relieving barriers and removing obstacles and we'll go on doing that. HUMPHRYS: The other reason why it may have been or seen to be a mistake, certainly a lot of people think it was, is that Tony Blair said last year didn't he that the class war was all over, finished? You've reopened it haven't you? BECKETT: No, because opportunity for everybody is actually about saying, 'never mind what distinctions people had in the past. Never mind whether there is argument about which classes people are in or were in, what matters is that everybody gets the opportunity to develop their talents to the full. Now that's extremely difficult to achieve but it's actually very important to do and it's what we're about. HUMPHRYS: You're regarded by a large section of the Labour party as good old class warrior, not so much of the old - a class warrior. Do you think the class war is over? BECKETT: I think it should be and I think that if we can actually deliver on opportunity for all then it will be seen as something that belongs in the past which is where it belongs. HUMPHRYS: I notice John Prescott quoted in one of the papers this morning as having said that we should get rid of Lords and Ladies for instance in the new House of Lords when the reforms feed through ultimately. Do you think that's a good idea? No more Lords and Ladies and classless people? BECKETT: Well the Royal Commission of course did recommend that you break the link between whether or not people have a peerage and whether or not they sit in what's now the House of Lords. HUMPHRYS: But I mean calling a Lord a lady and all that stuff........ BECKETT: Well, what I think is really important is that we have a sensible second chamber that works well and actually adds something of value to parliament and I think that we can get that, we're hoping to get it something like on the basis of consensus that remains to be seen. HUMPHRYS: Are you happy calling people Lords? M'lord and M'Lady and all that stuff? BECKETT: I don't mind what I call people. What matters is what life chances their youngsters have. HUMPHRYS: Okay, final thought then. You've opened up, you say, the class war, this hasn't reopened all these divisions and all that but when you look at the sorts of comments that have been made about a whole series of different sorts of people, professors and business people attacked by Gordon Brown yesterday, we saw the business bit in the Times. John Prescott attacking the lawyers. Alan Milburn attacking the consultants. All of these are seen now are they as sort of class enemies? Are they seen as forces of conservatism, class enemies........? BECKETT: None of this is about attacking people or attacking groups, it's about trying to get everybody to focus on the fact that we need greater opportunity for all of our citizens particularly all our young citizens, that we aren't providing that yet, that there are some obstacles, some barriers to that that we have to remove and that it is everybody's job in their various walks of life to address that agenda and to try and see what they can do. One of the things that has bedevilled previous governments is that people always said, 'Oh we can't do this because it's about money.' But what we're now saying, what we're now focussing on is the fact that - yes, make the money available but then you have to see how it's used and what the ultimate goal is, what the ultimate direction is, what you expect to get for the investment you're putting in and that's what Opportunity for All is really about. HUMPHRYS: Margaret Beckett, thank you very much indeed. BECKETT: Thank you.
NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.