Phil,I have to say coming from two Ealing Cabinet members I am really not impressed with your conservative arguments on equality. The Green policies in this area are much more concerned about addressing this issue and are informed by experience from more equal countries like the Nordic countries and Japan. I am now not surprised when Robin Taylor says conservatives “don’t believe in equality”. Also the charity Equality Trust mentioned that your own Tory Education shadow secretary Michael Gove said that the book “The Spirit Level” has influenced Conservative thinking on social policy (not sure how!). So why are you both on the attack when I refer to this book? Your misguided idea that the “free schools” is the silver bullet to solve inequality in this country does not wash. I disagree with this idea and it shows you really do not understand the issue. Also if this idea is so revolutionary why is Kings International College in Michael Gove’s own constituency being rescued by the local authority? This school is similar to a free school in many ways in that it is run by parties outside local authority control. Kings International opened in 2001 with 3Es as the external partner sitting on the governing board. The school was put into special measures by Ofsted as a failed school. A recent Mori poll also showed that the vast majority of the public want state funded schools run by local authorities. Outsourcing school provision cannot on its own solve widespread inequality in society. My ears are still open, but I must say I am struggling to find any real track record by the conservatives. I remember well the Tory opposition to sanctions against the white minority South Africa government during Apartheid, a heinous symbol of racial inequality, neither did the Tories support the founding of the NHS which addressed health inequalities of the day, nor did they introduce the minimum wage which addresses poverty and income inequalities. Today conservatives are against proportional representation when we all know the current system generates huge electoral inequalities between the parties particularly against smaller parties and against minority representation. So I am still to be convinced by your record.According to the research, the UK is one of the most unequal countries in the world, along with the USA, Singapore and Portugal. Its ugly head emerges periodically in the press, such as last weeks Employment Tribunal case in which it found in favour of 4500 female workers, mainly cleaners and care workers employed by Birmingham County Council. The women had claimed that they had lost out on bonuses for years that had been paid to male workers on the same grades. This is likely to result in over £600m in payouts by Birmingham County Council. Does gender inequality exist at Ealing Council?Closer to home in Ealing, in terms of health inequality, there is a life expectancy gap of 8 years for men in different wards. Men live eight years longer in one ward compared to another ward, within Ealing itself! Why is this? Well a pointer might be that Southall and Northolt have some of the most deprived wards in the UK, sitting not far from the wealthy central Ealing wards.According to the research, unequal societies suffer more from low levels of trust, low status of women (Birmingham County council case), obesity, lower life expectancy, higher levels of violence, low educational performance among children, more drug abuse, more mental health problems and higher teenage births.Taking trust on its own, a direct link between trust and income inequality has been found with inequality causing lower levels of trust. Intuitively this sounds right. Lack of trust can be a matter of life and death for some people, such as was seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for many African Americans in New Orleans where extreme levels of inequality exists. In the 1995 Chicago heat wave many poor African Americans living in areas with low levels of trust and high levels of crime were too frightened to open their windows and doors or leave their homes to go to the local cooling centres and died unnecessarily. Simple examples of lack of trust at home are faced every day particularly by the elderly in our society living lonely lives not knowing or trusting their neighbours. The effects of inequality are stark.Professor Kate Picket identifies the Nordic countries and Japan as those benefiting from good levels of income equality. If Britain wanted to be as equal as these countries she says levels of trust might be expected to be two-thirds as high again as they are now, mental illness might be more than halved, everyone would get an additional year of life, teenage birth rates could fall to one third of what they are now, homicides could fall by up to 75% and the government could be closing prisons all over the country, everyone could get as much as seven weeks extra holidays a year. Women might even get up to 40% public company board representation as in Norway and a lot more gender equality in politics. Now isn’t that a vision to work towards. We need to seriously look at this research rather than dismissing it out of hand, as you both do.The free schools Michael Gove wants to emulate may be like those in Sweden, but it is not the free schools that have made that society better. It is the fact that as a society they manage to keep the gap between rich and poor narrower. There is no point in having fantastic free for all schools if children arrive hungry.The question has to be: how to achieve broad equality in a society. I doubt “equality of opportunity” on its own would ever provide the right scale we need in the UK.
Conrad Bryan ● 5992d