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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
04.06.00
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. The
government talks about opportunity for all. But I'll be suggesting to
Margaret Beckett that in truth it's not much more than another political
catch-phrase. The Tories want our state schools to run themselves. I'll
be asking the Education Secretary if that's really the route to better
education. And the Lords are back ... and they have the government in
their sights. And ... beware of Greeks requesting gifts. Are the Elgin
marbles still safe in our hands? That's after the news read by Sarah Montague.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: The Elgin marbles have sat
in the British museum for 200 years and the Greeks want them back. Is
the House of Commons about to say yes?
If Tony Blair thought
reforming the Lords would bring them to heel .. he may have to think again.
And later in the
programme I'll be talking to Theresa May, the Shadow Education Secretary,
about the Tories' plans to shake up state education.
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.
HUMPHRYS: The House of Lords is back
for business this week and the government will be hoping that the short
break over Whitsun will have changed its mood. If Tony Blair had hoped
that his reforms would have turned the house into a more compliant group
of men and women it seems, as Terry Dignan reports, that he is about to
be sadly disappointed.
TERRY DIGNAN: Down in the woods today
young warriors prepare for combat. It's just harmless fun. If only the
same could be said of relations between the Labour Government and the Lords.
Purged of most of its hereditary peers, Parliament's Upper Chamber - armed
with its powers to change Government legislation - now feels even better
equipped to do its job.
The Government now has to endure a form of guerrilla warfare in the Lords
with Opposition peers justifying their tactics by quoting the Leader of
Labour's forces in the Lords, Baroness Jay. She says the Lords now has
more legitimacy and votes against the Government carry more weight. Conservatives
call it the Jay Doctrine. It's said Tony Blair is so alarmed, he fears
Labour's promise to carry out further reform to the Lords could make it
even more powerful.
LORD RICHARD: Whatever you did to the House
of Lords, or do to the House of Lords, it will be more troublesome to the
House of Commons, to the Government - no question about that, and indeed
that's what's happening.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I think they've got a whole lot
of people in the, in the Cabinet - senior members of the Cabinet - who
are saying, what is this monster that we've unleashed? This wasn't part
of the project, this wasn't part the great plan.
DIGNAN: In deepest Surrey the combatants
are dressed for battle and eager for action. Labour ministers feel many
peers are behaving as if they, too, are on a mission to seek and destroy.
Yet because most of the hereditary peers have gone, the Lords now operates
under new rules of engagement. It's all thanks, say Opposition members,
to their latest weapon, the Jay Doctrine.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: What she said was that this House
would have new authority, it would have new, new legitimacy because people
were here on merit, no party had overall control and therefore the Government
would listen more to decisions which this second chamber made. Since November
last year I've been trying to test that by defeating the Government over
a whole range of issues.
LORD ROGERS: It is a more authoritative
House perhaps to an extent which wasn't wholly appreciated, that it's got
a degree of confidence that it, it didn't have before.
DIGNAN: Peers have voted against
the Mode of Trial Bill, which ended trial by jury for some offences, in
favour of allowing candidates for London Mayor to have free postage, and
against the Local Government Bill which compels councils to be run by mayors
or cabinets. Peers could also reject privatising air traffic control,
contained in the Transport Bill. The Freedom of Information Bill, too,
may be changed against ministers' wishes. Plans to control party funding
may be delayed if the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Bill
is held up in a Parliamentary logjam, with legislation passed back and
forth between Lords and Commons.
LORD RICHARD: I think that there will be
more defeats for the Government, there will no doubt be ping-pong on one
or two key issues, between the two Houses. I think it will be a, a difficult
run up to the recess and it'll be a long over-spill.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: They created this House against
an enormous amount of opposition not just from the Conservative Party but
from outside as, as well so they can hardly complain when the House continues
to do its job as effectively as possible.
DIGNAN: In the past, it's argued,
the House of Lords was wary of using its firepower against a Labour administration.
That's because Labour could complain it was an affront to democracy that
hundreds of hereditary peers, many them Conservative, could defeat an elected
Government. But now that most hereditaries have gone, Labour may have to
get used to the Lords behaving as many believe a Second Chamber ought to
behave - as an effective check on Government.
LORD STRATHCLYDE; We often used to win the argument
in the House of Lords but we failed to win the political argument because
the Labour Party always said 'ah well these are the words of hereditary
peers and therefore they have no legitimacy'. Margaret Jay has sought
to legitimise this House, the Labour Party have sought to legitimise this
House so they can hardly complain when we use the existing powers in a
more vigorous way than we did before.
LORD RICHARD; I think it should act like
a proper legislative chamber, which means that, that there are bound to
be clashes between the two Houses. I mean it happens in other legislatures
there are clashes between the two Houses. It depends at the end of the
day what you want your second chamber to be. I mean if you just want it
to be sort of a, a rubber stamp in ermine for what the Government wants,
well then you'd be very dissatisfied if it behaves like a proper legislative
chamber. If you want a proper legislative chamber well then you shouldn't
be surprised at the way it is behaving.
DIGNAN: In the make-believe world
of paintball teams are equally matched. Tony Blair is calling up reinforcements
in the real world and appointing more Labour peers to achieve a balance
of forces with the Tories. Even then Labour would have to persuade a number
of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, or non-party Crossbenchers.
LORD CRAIG: That puts a lot of pressure
on the Government of the day to ensure that their arguments are sound and
carry weight. There is no question of getting legislation through here
- or shouldn't be - purely on a, a whipped vote.
LORD ROGERS: It must use, get used to working
with third parties and there are some even in the Lords who find it very
difficult to believe that they're beholden on the Liberal Democrats while
Tony Blair in the Commons doesn't have to bother at all about Charles Kennedy's
Members of Parliament.
DIGNAN: But resistance to the Government
could be made futile by the Parliament Acts. Under these Acts, the Lords
is forced to surrender its right to continually block legislation. Ministers
can disarm the Lords and turn a Bill into law after a year's delay. Labour's
real attitude to the upper chamber may be exposed, it's claimed, if peers'
powers are decommissioned.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: In the months ahead when a lot
of the pieces of legislation the Government have been defeated on in the
House of Lords come back, having been re-examined in the House of Commons,
then I think we'll be able to see more clearly what it is the, the Government
feel about this second chamber and its, and its legitimacy. I suspect what
we will see is that the Government have no intention of listening to the
second chamber, to the House of Lords and will reject and seek to trample
over every decision that we have taken.
LORD RODGERS: It's very difficult for Secretaries
of State in the House of Commons who've, don't, really take any interest
in the Lords, very difficult for them to say 'well the Lords has made an
amendment - I will accept it'. It needs a degree of magnanimity, a degree
of wisdom and I'm afraid that some ministers like Jack Straw for example,
the Home Secretary, is, is too proud of his legislation and too unwilling
to recognise that the Lords are only carrying out their constitutional
obligation and he should accept the fact that they're sometimes right.
DIGNAN: Labour's recent treatment
at the hands of bolder, more confident peers may well have affected its
attitude to the next stage of reforming the House of Lords. The Government's
battles with the Lords have raised doubts about Labour's strategy to complete
the reform of the Upper Chamber. Neutralising the threat from hereditary
peers was meant to be Stage One. Stage Two is about making the Lords more
democratic. Tony Blair's dilemma is how to proceed without making the Lords
a more powerful force to be reckoned with. A Royal Commission chaired
by Tory Lord Wakeham said in January the House should have five-hundred-and-fifty
Peers. A minority should be elected. The majority appointed by an independent
Commission. The Prime Minister should lose his power to appoint. Party
numbers in the Lords should be proportional to the votes cast at the previous
General Election. So further reform of the House may not make life any
easier for Labour.
LORD RICHARD: I think that you've got
to produce a, a, a system, in which the second chamber has got the power
to say to the executive, hey you know wait, hold it up, think, you know,
we don't agree with you. Now it is going to make politics in a sense more
uncertain, in the future than perhaps it has been in the past. But I'm
not sure that's a, that that's necessarily a bad thing.
LORD RODGERS: On the whole the prospect
is that a, a reformed House, at the next stage of reform will make the
House of Lords more independent and they don't want that.
DIGNAN: The Government pledges
there'll be no let up in the pursuit of Stage Two. It's set up its own
version of an appointments commission. But it can only appoint a minority
of peers, the Crossbenchers. The Government has yet to act on the rest
of the Wakeham Report. That may not bode well for further reform.
LORD RICHARD: I suspect that they won't
be all that enthusiastic about it, so we may have to live with this for
quite a long time.
LORD WAKEHAM: I think the government would
have trouble if they left things as they were. I mean it would look, look
a sign of weakness from their point. They set the commission up, it's produced
a report which met the criteria that they set in their terms of reference
and I think it does produce a basis for a long-term reform.
DIGNAN: In truth, the Government
is proceeding with the utmost caution. Ministers say they want to avoid
conflict over Stage Two and instead hold talks with their enemies about
how to implement the Report. That may be naive because as in paintball,
in politics the aim is to be victorious over your opponents not rescue
them from their predicament.
LORD WAKEHAM: In my view it's not very
realistic to expect there to be an all party agreement on our report in
the run up to an election. I believe that the Government has to decide
whether it thinks that it's right or not and to set forth it's policy about
implementation.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: They've stopped thinking. I'm
not sure that they ever did very much thinking about the long term. They're
not sure which way to, to, go next.
Do they want to have a stronger second chamber as part of a stronger Parliament?
Do they want to preserve the independent nature of the second chamber?
Do they - are they going to demonstrate how the Government listens more
to what the second chamber is doing as part of a, an integral Parliament?
All these things we need to hear them say.
DIGNAN: Tomorrow hostilities resume
when Parliament returns. In the Lords the Government faces further harassment,
its legislation targeted in an often unfriendly environment. The hereditaries
have gone, yet the Government 's reforms mean the Lords can now perform
with even more deadly effect.
HUMPHRYS: Terry Dignan reporting
there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Tories seem to think
they've been offered an open goal by the Labour attack on privilege in
Britain and in the past few days they've been doing their best to take
advantage of it. But both main parties agree that state schools are not
good enough, now the Tories are coming up with some new proposals of their
own to improve them. But is the Tory approach really all that different
from the government's? The Shadow Education Secretary is Theresa May.
Good afternoon.
THERESA MAY: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: Can I remind you of what
John Major said, in order to establish that there actually isn't any difference
between you, there's no point in you quarrelling with the government's
attempts to level the playing field in education because here's what Mr.
Major said, and he said this only a few years ago when he was Prime Minister
"In the game of life we Tories should even up the rules, give people opportunity
and choice, open up an avenue of hope in their lives, I don't mean some
people, I mean everyone, opportunity for all, it's in the bloodstream of
our party" - well that is precisely what the government is saying, it's
what Margaret Beckett said half-a-dozen times, sitting in that very seat,
ten-minutes ago, opportunity for all.
MAY: The hallmark of this
government is that what they say and what they actually do is always different.
And that's no different in education. What we see from the government
is they may talk about opportunity for all, they may talk about choice,
but actually they are the party that is cutting opportunity and reducing
choice. And what I think is most damaging about what Gordon Brown and
indeed John Prescott have been doing in relation to our leading universities,
is that actually they are giving a message, don't bother, it's not worth
it, if you're from a state school there are barriers there that are going
to be put in your place, which is so far from the truth, that universities
have been doing a very great deal to encourage state schools to apply,
state school pupils to apply. The real problem is that we still haven't
got enough state school pupils applying to our leading universities.
HUMPHRYS: But you had eighteen
years to get more of them into Oxbridge.
MAY: And indeed we increased
the numbers of young people in this country going into university from
one in eight to one in three. They had enormous success in actually encouraging
young people to go into higher education and indeed in the leading universities,
Oxford and Cambridge, and other leading universities, the number of state
pupils being accepted, the number of state, the proportion of state pupils
has actually increased, but there is a problem in our, in many of our secondary
schools, of expectations, and it's Labour that over the years has been
in the business of levelling down expectations, rather than raising them,
and of taking away opportunities.
HUMPHRYS: But I was talking about
pupils from state comprehensives going to the so called elite universities.
That didn't go up during your time.
MAY: The number of pupils
from the state, from the state sector, who are going to leading universities,
has increased over the years, as the universities themselves have been
making every effort to encourage state pupils to go into those universities,
but there is still an issue about ensuring that pupils from our state schools
apply to go into the universities, and if you look at just the Oxford figures,
for example, you see that the percentage of students of eligible age applying
to, to Oxford from the maintained sector is about one per cent whereas
from the independent sector it's over four-and-a-half per cent, so that,
you know, that's the issue, it's expectations in the state system that
have been driven down by the Labour Party over the years.
HUMPHRYS: But, again, you had the
opportunity to do that as well, I mean to get more children from comprehensives
into those posh universities, and it didn't happen.
MAY: We have been getting
more children from comprehensives into the leading universities, and the
universities have been working very hard at doing that. But I think there
is going to be a real problem, in the next, in the short term, as a result
of what government ministers have been doing. Because they have been giving
a message that there are barriers there, that there aren't, what is happening,
and we've seen it today, there are reports already, that Cambridge has
been finding state school pupils ringing up and saying that they are not
going to bother to apply now. That's the real damage that Gordon Brown
has been doing, far from opening opportunities, he has actually been giving
a message that he's closing down opportunities.
HUMPHRYS: Well, they'd argue with
that of course, and what they would say is one of things we want to do
is improve the standard of our schools, clearly, everybody agrees that
that ought to happen. Now one of the ways they want to do it is to give
schools the opportunity to run themselves more completely than they are
doing at the moment, to get rid of the LEA's, in effect, not to get rid
of them, but to give schools more powers, exactly the same as you. You
made a speech last night laying out the way you see the education system
changing in this country, the Tory vision, no difference, effectively no
difference here at all between you and them.
MAY: There's a very great
deal of difference actually. The rhetoric that the government is using
talks about freedom for schools, it talks about getting money into schools,
but if you look in the detail of what they are proposing, actually the
reality is very different. We genuinely want to make schools free, and
give them the freedom to have all of the money to spend on what is going
on in their schools....
HUMPHRYS: ....all of it?
MAY: ....well, the government
say they are going to have eighty-five p in the pound, in the future eighty-five
p in the pound will go to the schools. I want to make sure that every
pound spent on schools is a pound spent in schools. I think schools should
have the money and have the power to decide how to spend it because they
know best what's in the interest of their pupils.
HUMPHRYS: Mm. So all their twenty-one
billion at the moment that goes to the system as it were, if we include
schools and LEA's and all the rest of it. All of that would go to the
schools.
MAY: There is too much
money in the system at the moment that is being spent on bureaucracy, not
just at local authority level, but also at central government level as
well, and this government has massively increased the amount of bureaucracy,
the number of people who have had to be employed in order to cope with
government plans, government circulars, all of this red tape, which the
government's own better regulation task force has told us is distracting
people from the job of raising standards.
HUMPHRYS: ...so the answer to that
on
MAY: ....there's money
there that's being spent on the wrong thing, it's not being spent in schools,
I want to see it being spent in schools.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so the answer
to my question was yes, all of that money, all of that money will go to
the schools, will it?
MAY: I want to see money
that is currently being spent on needless bureaucracy going into the schools,
I want to see every pound spent on schools, being a pound spent in schools.
HUMPHRYS: ....well I hear your
rhetoric, when you were accusing the government of rhetoric a moment ago,
and that's a very nice phrase, all of the money being spent in schools
go, go on schools, going into schools, fine, lovely phrase, but what does
it mean in practice? Does it mean, I repeat the question, that all of
that money, all of it, will go to the schools?
MAY: What it means is that
all the money at the moment that is being spent on the schools should be
spent in the schools, rather than....
HUMPHRYS: ....and on local ......
MAY: .....rather than money,
that is currently being spent, supposed to be spent on schools, but is
being held back at the centre, it's being held back in bureaucracy.
HUMPHRYS: ....well, precisely the
view that....
MAY: ....and not going
to ......no well this isn't the view of the government.....
HUMPHRYS: ....well, tell me, let
me try and help the audience here, because I imagine one or two people
may be a little bit puzzled by this. At the moment, a certain amount of
money goes to schools, certain amount of money goes to local education
authorities, are you saying that in future, no money will go to Local Education
Authorities, but all of the money will go to the schools. I mean, that's
a very straight-forward question, isn't it?
MAY: At the moment, what
happens is that money goes to Local Education Authorities and they decide
how much money is then going to be spent on the schools. Money is held
back at those Education Authorities, and is held back initially at Central
Government as well, for them to decide how it should be spent. I want
that money to be actually in the schools, for the schools to decide how
it should be spent.....
HUMPHRYS: ....all of it?
MAY: ....and I believe
that money that is current, there is money currently in Local Education
Authorities that is being spent needlessly on bureaucracy that should be
actually going into the schools. I want schools to have greater powers,
for example on admissions policy......
HUMPHRYS: ....fine....
MAY: ....on exclusions
policy....
HUMPHRYS: ....we'll come to that
in a moment if we may, please....
MAY: ....be able to deciding
what they do for themselves.....
HUMPHRYS: ....I would love to cover
that but I would like with the money for the moment, as you said, David
Blunkett talks about eighty-five per cent up from whatever it is at the
moment, seventy-five per cent, eight per cent at the moment, are you saying
under you system, that would be one-hundred per cent?
MAY: What I'm saying is
that I want every pound spent on schools to be a pound spent in schools
(both speaking at once) What we've set out in our free schools policy
- this is about giving schools freedom, it's about getting money to the
schools and giving them the power to spend it as they think fit not on
government priorities but on the schools' priorities for the children in
their classroom. Well if you'd just wait a minute John and let me say
what I wanted to say......
HUMPHRYS: I've asked you a couple
of times now........
MAY: There will, under
free schools, there will still be some functions that a local authority
will undertake in education. For example, we're looking at the statementing
process for special educational needs. But money that should... that is
being spent on the schools should be being spent in the schools and the
schools should have the power to spend that money in the way that they
think is right for pupils in their classrooms and they should have power,
as I say, on other things as well like....... exclusions policy.
HUMPHRYS: We'll come to that but
just to finish this point then because I'm not getting very much further
with it I suspect. What this is is an argument about the proportion of
money that goes to the schools from the LEA's rather than what you've actually
been suggesting to me which is all of it going in - it's a question of
degree isn't it, so there may be slight difference between you and the
government but it's a question of degree rather than you saying one thing
absolutely clearly - in future, all the money is going to the schools.
You're not really saying that at all are you?
MAY: David Blunkett is
changing the schools. What I'm saying is that money in education that's
due to be spent on schools should be spent in schools, it should go to
the schools and they should have the power as to how it is spent rather
than what David Blunkett is proposing which is still holding back money
not just at local authority level but at central government level and deciding
at Whitehall how it should be spent on our schools.
HUMPHRYS: Our problem is we still
don't know how much you would hold back but there we are, we will see perhaps
one day. Anyway - grammar schools: let's have a look at that. Again
your policy, just the same as the Labour party in practicals. They don't
like them but they won't get rid of those relatively few that remain.
You like them but that's meaningless because you're not going to create
any more. No difference between you two is there really?
MAY: There's a very great
deal of difference between the Labour party which is working to try to
get rid of the remaining grammar schools and which has had a vendetta against
grammar schools for many decades now and a Conservative party that is saying
- these schools do well, parents want to see these schools retained and
we believe those schools should be retained.
HUMPHRYS: But we won't have any
more of them?
MAY: Well, under our free
schools policy, schools will have freedom over admissions policy and it
will be possible for schools to choose to be selective if they wish to
do so.
HUMPHRYS: Hm. But we won't have
any more of them?
MAY: I've just said that
schools under free schools policy will have the power to choose their admissions
policy and to choose to be selective if they wish to do so and to choose
to be academically selective or to select pupils on other basis if for
example they want to have a particular ethos in the school and want to
be able to insure that pupils will maintain that ethos.
HUMPHRYS: So we might end up then
after five years of a Labour government with many many many.... Of a Tory
government, with many many many more grammar schools. Is that what you're
telling me?
MAY: What I'm saying is
that if we give schools the freedom to determine their admissions policy
we may very well see some schools choosing to become academically selective
- in other words to become grammar schools. Other schools, I think, will
choose to go down a different route. Other schools will actively wish
to maintain a fully comprehensive intake. Some schools as I say may wish
to emphasise perhaps the religious nature of the school or a particular
ethos that they wish or have a specialism. What I want to see is diversity
in the system.
HUMPHRYS: So that any school that
wanted to become a grammar school and obviously had the support of people
in the area and all that, you would say - 'Fine, go ahead and do it'?
MAY: We believe that schools
should have the freedom to determine their admissions policy and as I say
I believe that that would actually lead to a greater diversity in our education
system and diversity will enable parents to have greater choice and that's
what I think is so important, parents having choice.
HUMPHRYS: I started this interview
suggesting there was little difference between you. This is a very very
significant difference isn't it because we could end up in this case after
five years of a Tory government, ten years of a Tory government with the
return to the status quo, I mean that's to say the post war status quo.
We could have a massive number of grammar schools in Britain and a diminishing
number of comprehensives couldn't we?
MAY: The freedom would
be there for schools to determine their own admissions policy and it may
well be as I say that some will choose to do that on an academically selective
basis - i.e. that new grammar schools will indeed be created. This government
is trying to get rid of the grammar schools although we see today that
they're suggesting that actually that the comprehensive system hasn't worked
in the way that people thought it was going to work. What's important
I think in education is making sure that we get the education which is
right for every child and I think it is important to ensure that those
children who have academic abilities have those abilities nurtured and
developed and that they are encouraged to go on to reach to their best,
to aspire to our leading universities. I also think it's important that
for those children who are not academically able that we also provide an
equally valued route through education be it a route, for example, that
is based on more technical, skills based, or vocational based education.
I think that's something we've actually missed out on for too long and
it's important that we do ensure that that is in place as well.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at some of
the children who tend to end up at the very bottom of the heap those who
often end up because they're violent or whatever reason it may be, they
end up being excluded and see whether there is any difference between you
and the government here. You want to give head teachers the power to exclude
children as they will, as they think fit and proper. But again, it appears
that you're behind the government here because it is moving ahead already
and you've come in behind it because the government seems now to be moving
to that position.
MAY: Not at all. The government
has targets for schools to reduce exclusions and they fine the schools
if they don't meet those targets or if they exclude beyond their target.
So what that is meaning in reality in schools, what I'm told not just
by heads, not just by governors and parents but by pupils in schools as
well is that disruptive pupils are being kept in the classroom disrupting
the education of others. So what we see under this government is that
the education of the many is being damaged by the behaviour of the few.
HUMPHRYS: What the government is
doing is setting up what they call LSU's, learning support units I think
you call them - sin bins so at least they know, they seem to have a clear
policy as to what they will do with those children who are excluded. What
would you do with them?
MAY: Well can I just comment
first on what the government is proposing? It's David Blunkett I think
who first used, I'm right in saying, first used the term 'sin bins', it
wasn't our term, but the sin bins or the learning support units that they
say they're setting up are actually in the schools,. So what he's doing
is a very, if you like, is trying to insure that the numbers excluded from
the schools are reduced by excluding them from within the school.
HUMPHRYS: So what would you do?
MAY: What actually happens
is that those disruptive pupils can still disrupt the education of others
just by physically being in the school. What we want to do is to insure
that they're giving a proper education away from the site but we also want
to set up centres that work with pupils before they are excluded when they're
at risk of exclusion to insure they don't reach that point in the first
place.
HUMPHRYS: Teresa May, thank you
very much.
MAY: Thank you.
HUMPHRYS: For a couple of centuries
the Elgin marbles have sat in the British museum, removed, say the Greeks,
without their permission. Now the Greeks want them back. And until now,
and indeed they wanted them back for a long time, until now successive
British governments have always said no. Well, this afternoon the Greek
Foreign Minister, George Papandreou, is going to the museum to see them
for himself. And then, and no-one can remember this happening before,
he, a foreign minister is going to give evidence to a House of Commons
select committee. As Robin Aitken reports, it may be that the arguments
for handing them back are gaining ground.
ROBIN AITKEN: Fashioned in Athens two
and a half thousand years ago the beautiful Elgin Marbles used to adorn
the Parthenon Temple. But two hundred years ago they were shipped to London
by an acquisitive aristocrat and the Greeks have long wanted them back.
The Elgin Marbles are among the world's great cultural treasures - dating
from the time when Greek civilisation was at its zenith. They came here
to London when British power and influence was approaching its apex and
their removal has been a source of hurt to many Greeks ever since. Greek
governments have frequently called for their return only to be rebuffed
by successive British governments. But now it seems the tide of opinion
within the Labour party may be moving in favour of repatriating the Marbles.
ANDREW DISMORE: I think Labour members of parliament,
if they were given a free vote on the issue of the Parthenon sculptures,
I think there will be an overwhelming majority for a return to their rightful
home in Athens. And I think if you ask the average British person in the
street, all the opinion polls have shown that there is an overwhelming
view to the same effect; that the sculptures should go back to Greece.
TIM LOUGHTON: I'm interested in the Elgin
Marbles for what they are and what they represent and that has very little
to do with politics but has everything to do with appreciation of classical
art, archaeology and architecture two and a half millennia ago - and that's
the real issue here. So if various Labour MPs are trying to use it to
drum up some political opportunistic arguments then I think those should
be discarded very, very quickly
AITKEN: The British Museum, proud
custodian of one of the world's great cultural collections upon which
its mission to educate depends views the prospect of losing the Marbles
with horror.
ROBERT ANDERSON: ` Well the Marbles are terribly
important to the British Museum because they are part of the British Museum;
they are part of, if you like, the British Museum culture which has developed
from the inception of the museum in the mid 18th century. They were acquired
in the early 19th century, they've been here for 200 years now and they
are very influential indeed in the development of British culture, indeed
European culture. The fact is we're in a building now which was designed,
if you like, as a Greek temple built in 1823 by Smirk, and that's no accident.
AITKEN: The strange story of how
the Marbles came to England starts here - Broomhall, in Fife, home of
the Earls of Elgin. Constantinople was then the capital of the Ottoman
Empire and in 1799 the Seventh Earl was appointed British ambassador there
and he gained permission to remove the marbles. The Seventh Earl was
fascinated by the heroic age of Greek civilisation and a great admirer
of classical architecture and it was at his own architect's suggestion
that he conceived the notion of cataloguing and taking plaster casts of
the sculptures in the Parthenon but he went one step further and removed
the originals because he believed they were in danger of being destroyed.
And some have labelled that a work of cultural vandalism. The Earl took
an artist with him who painted the scene at the Parthenon on their arrival.
They found a noble edifice in ruins, great sculptures broken and vandalised.
The current Lord Elgin says the sketch vindicates his ancestor's decision
to remove the marbles.
THE EARL of ELGIN: Now that was the sight that
fell to his eyes, and what do you do? At least he did something and what
you're telling me is that a lot of people still continue talking and that's
what worries me because these talkers never achieve anything; they never
could be considered to be preserving a thing. The amount of wind that
has been passed in the last 200 years about what should or should not have
been done has saved nothing.
AITKEN: Calls for the Marbles to
be returned to Greece began almost as soon as they arrived in London; the
poet Byron was one of the early champions of the cause, but the museum
resisted those claims and insisted it was an exemplary custodian of the
treasures. The museum's claims were embrarrassingly undermined by the
historian William St Clair who revealed details of a ham-fisted restoration
which was then hushed up.
WILLIAM ST CLAIRE: The Marbles in the British Museum
were very badly damaged in the late 1930s through having their surfaces
scraped with wire brushes and harsh abrasives and they lost a great deal
of their authenticity and their original surface and then the British Museum
had a secret policy and maintained secret files for 60 years to prevent
the public and parliament and scholars from knowing about this.
AITKEN: The reason for the botched
clean up job was to render the Marbles gleaming white - but it outraged
Greek experts. Even so the Museum still maintains that its marbles
have fared much better than the ones Elgin left behind.
ANDERSON: I have no doubt at all
that many of the sculptures from the Parthenon would not now exist if Elgin
had not acted in the way that he did. There's also of course the issue
about what happened after Elgin; There's been the recent phenomenon of
acid environments and marbles not only in Athens, but in all parts of the
world, are being eroded very fast.
AITKEN: Melina Mercouri - the actress
turned Culture Minister demonstrated the magnetic appeal the Marbles have
always exercised on Greek politicians when she dramatically called for
their return in the early 1980s. The present Greek Foreign Minister George
Papandreou himself also paid homage two years ago. For the Greeks the
return of the Marbles has never only been about dry rationality and scholarly
debate; it has attained a near religious significance.
VICTORIA SOLOMONIDES: For us they are a symbol of our nationhood
if you wish. When we talk about the Parthenon sculptures we talk about
returning to the monument works of art, sculptures which were created with
that monument in mind. They are not free-standing artefacts like the Venus
de Milo. They were created for that space and they are best seen in the
context of the monument in the context of that particular site.
AITKEN: That's the argument that
long ago persuaded the British left to back the Greek claim and they still
remain loyal to it.
MICHAEL FOOT: We should be doing our best
in my opinion to be assisting Greek democracy. We couldn't do anything,
any better service to those who fought to maintain real democracy in Greece
than to send back the Marbles. It would be a great triumph for the present
government and I hope we do it in response to Mr Papandreou. We should
have done it long ago.
AITKEN: The moment came when the
promises could have been redeemed in the aftermath of their great 1997
triumph were Labour going to give the Marbles back?
CHRIS SMITH: We are not. For two reasons:
One is they are an integral part of the British Museum collections, they
are wonderfully displayed in the British Museum, millions of visitors come
every year to see them, not just from Britain but from everywhere around
the world and it would make no sense at all to split up the British Museum's
collection in that way. But the second reason is that if you start embarking
on questioning where particular works of art are located around the world
then you get into all sorts of difficult areas of discussion and you're
going to have swaps of works of art taking place throughout the entire
world disrupting everything and it just doesn't make sense.
HUMPHRYS: The previous Labour Leader
said we should do it, so they were wrong?
SMITH: It's something we had a
look at over the course of the last five years. We decided it was not a
feasible or a sensible option and we won't do it.
AITKEN: But the case of the Glasgow
Sioux Indian ghost shirt shows that restoring important works to their
original cultures isn't entirely without precedent. Last year the Kelvingrove
museum in Glasgow handed back to tribal representatives the sacred Latoka
Sioux garment retrieved after the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. The museum
had been swayed by arguments that the garment had spiritual significance
for the tribe. But the British Museum believes it must resist similar
claims.
ANDERSON: Requests come from all
over the world for material to be repatriated. If a major change were to
take place and, unlikely though it is if they were to leave here, then
there's no doubt there'd be a torrent of requests from countries from all
over the world, the precedent would have been set and I think the possibility
of having great centres of learning, great centres of education indeed
great centres of enjoyment like the British Museum would be totally undermined.
AITKEN: And it is this issue that
Gerald Kauffman has decided his committee should investigate. Leading
from the front, he took members of the Culture select committee to the
Parthenon as part of its enquiry into the return of antiquities. The committee
is still deliberating. Others have made up their minds.
ANDREW DISMORE: I think it's part of their national
identity. They were given away during the Ottoman occupation of Greece
which went on for hundreds of years. The Greeks could do nothing about
it at the time; they wept when they saw the Marbles leave the Parthenon.
We've looked after them for them I suppose for 150 - 200 years now and
now it's time for them to go home where they belong.
LOUGHTON: It's actually patronising
and xenophobic of Greece or whichever country it is to suggest that it
is our history and we must have everything that goes with it, we must have
all the bits and pieces and antiquities that go with it in order for us
to display our history to its best.
AITKEN: As one of the great cultural
treasures of the Western World the Marbles are a huge draw for visitors.
Each year some five and a half million people visit the British Museum
to see them. That fact alone underscores their continuing importance to
the collection. and makes the stakes in this long running, cultural tug-of-war
even higher.
HUMPHRYS: Robin Aitken reporting,
and that's it for this week, but before we go, a reminder about our web-site,
for those of you on the internet, you can find all my latest interviews,
and the whole of the rest of the programme there. We're back at our normal
time next week, but on BBC2 instead of BBC1, and I'll be speaking then
to the Health Secretary, Alan Milburn about the state of the NHS. Until
then, good afternoon.
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