Examination of Witnesses (Questions 66
- 79)
THURSDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2004
RT HON
LORD HATTERSLEY
Q66 Chairman: If I could get us together
again and welcome our witness to the second session of the morning
which is Lord Hattersley. I am sorry for the slight delay in hearing
you. We wanted to do justice to our previous witnesses.
Lord Hattersley: I have not had
an excursion into Utopia for some time!
Q67 Chairman: We very much wanted
to hear from you as part of our inquiry into these issues because
of the way in which you have expressed a certain approach to them,
and thank you very much for your note beforehand. I do not know
whether you want to say anything by way of introduction or whether
you want to move into some questions.
Lord Hattersley: I am in your
hands. My note was a brief resume of my views on the subject and
I will not weary the Committee by repeating them.
Q68 Chairman: My little briefing
note for your section here says, "This session provides the
Committee with an opportunity to question a leading sceptic in
the debate about choice." I think you are more than that.
You tell me in one of your Guardian pieces that choice
is "an obsession of the suburban middle classes". It
is rather more serious than that if we believe someone like Phil
Collins from the Social Market Foundation who says it is something
that the left ought to be seriously interested in.
Lord Hattersley: My note does
attempt to make a specific point, which is choice as an instrument
of public policy, choice as a way of allocating resources and
which, despite the evidence I heard two minutes ago, I believe
in my lifetime, Chairman, probably yours, will continue to be
scarce. The notion of a society with a huge surplus of resources
which might give us certain realities of choice seems to me to
be a chimera. My objection to choice is how I have described it
in those rather lurid terms which you quote from The Guardian.
I have absolutely no doubt at all that if choice as conceived
within the present limitations of resources becomes an instrument
of the allocation of Government resources then the net result
will be a disproportionate advantage to the articulate, to the
self-confident and the demanding and they are basically the suburban
middle classes.
Q69 Chairman: Someone might think
that this resolute opposition to choice mechanisms of all kinds
is reminiscent of the voice which said you cannot paint your council
house door any colour you want.
Lord Hattersley: I can see you
have been going through my Guardian articles in some detail.
I admit that in my misspent youth I was the chairman of a housing
committee which not only stopped people from painting doors according
to their own taste but prevented men in Sheffield from keeping
whippets or pigeons. I have grown out of that. Choice as exercised
by individuals is something I want to promote. Let me give you
an example. I very much support Dr Reid's proposals for the smoking
restrictions because they do offer the opportunity for one group
of people to do one thing and one group of people to do another.
I would not object if a group of Muslim parents wanted to set
up a Muslim school in what was once my constituency in order to
represent the religion they follow and to be faithful to Islam.
My objection is to the imposition of choice as now advocated by
both major parties and the consequences of that. I wonder if I
can give you a simple ad hominem example of what worries
me from my own experience. I had an angioplasty five years ago,
which is when a sort of flue brush is inserted into your main
artery to clean it out, and have lived happily ever after. After
two and a half years I got a message from one of the great London
teaching hospitals which said, I thought rather amusingly, "Two
and a half years have passed, it is therefore time for your annual
examination." When I went for the examination I made a joke
about this and the doctor said to me, partly in defence of their
rather strange message and partly in reproach, "But we would've
thought you were the sort of person who will argue and press.
We were astonished that you just waited for it to happen. Aren't
you the sort of person who insists on getting what the health
service can provide?" I am normally. What worries me is the
sort of person who is not able or competent or likely to press
for what the health service will provide and they are the people
who normally wait two and a half years for the annual examination.
What astonishes me about the political debate on this subject
is that politicians who turn up to their weekly or fortnightly
constituency surgeries do not know that there are two classes
of people, one who will make the choices and get the best and
the other who will accept what is left over, and what worries
me is what is left over and the people who get it.
Q70 Chairman: Let me take us perhaps
a little further on this and bring in a friend of yours and a
friend of mine, which is R H Tawney. Tawney said, as you well
know, that we should not just deal in what he called "resounding
affirmations", we should attend to the facts of the case.
If we attend to the facts of the case then surely we discover
that the post-1945 welfare state has not been very good on equity
despite what you have just said. All the evidence says not very
good on equity, does very badly for the least articulate and the
poorest and that would suggest that we might be interested in
mechanisms that would do better for them. If we look at the evidence,
it suggests that there may be a role for choice mechanisms in
doing this. I would like to quote from Phil Collins from the SMF
who was here because they have been doing some work on all this.
He says, "There is solid evidence from abroad that choice
can improve services without impairing equity", and he goes
on to say, "It is not true to say that choice mechanisms
can never serve social democratic objectives." If it is the
case, and there is evidence to suggest that it can be, that choice
mechanisms can serve social democratic objectives and advance
the interests of those who have not done very well under existing
arrangements, does this not mean that people like you should be
instinctively interested in them rather than instinctively hostile
to them?
Lord Hattersley: Of course. If
the hypothesis you offer was correct it would be my duty to want
to have choice, but I do not accept your premise or Mr Collins'
premise. Going back to Tawney for a minute, the quotation you
gave was Tawney's demand that we should draw up a proper boundary
between the public and private sectors, saying that there is no
overall rule which governs how much public effort there should
be, how much private enterprise, but we have to look at it case
by case. That was the context of the comment you have just quoted
and I agree with that entirely. There are some areas in which
choice is necessary for efficiency and for freedom, that is the
private sector, although I must say, the market has not been the
unavoidable and irrevocable and inevitable promotion of efficiency
that some of its advocates try to make out. If your thesis was
right and choice in the public sector, where I think it is largely
inappropriate, did improve the quality of services then of course
I would be for it, but I see no evidence of that. Mr Collins and
I were on a radio programme in which he kept urging me to look
at a Scandinavian example of how choice improved schools in Sweden,
believing, as people of his sort do, that you only have to say
Sweden to people of our sort and we will automatically agree with
what is said. I looked at the example and what happened, of course,
is what one might expect to happen, for some people the choice
worked extremely well but there was a residue for which it did
not work at all and it is those people that concern me. The only
way in my view that you can meet the needs of that residual group
of people who will not exercise choice is by an overall improvement
in the quality of public services and I believe that choice will
act as a detriment to that process because we know as practical
politicians that services are improved when people agitate and
what choice is going to do is provide improved services for the
agitating persons and it will then be assumed that it is improved
for everybody and it will be improved for the sort of people I
used to represent in the Spark division of Birmingham.
Q71 Chairman: Leaving aside council
house doors, we know from various choice mechanisms that have
been introduced, whether it is the demand from disabled people
that they should have direct payments to buy the kind of social
care that they want, that these are working well, they are popular
and well supported. The move to choice-based letting systems rather
than simply being allocated by the council seems to be working
well. If we stop talking about choice and start talking about
power, that is just giving a bit more power to people, particularly
those who have not had very much. Are these not things that we
should feel instinctively supportive of?
Lord Hattersley: I quote back
at you your aphorism or whatever it was from Tawney. I think there
are some of examples you gave where it is appropriate and some
where it is not. I would be deeply concerned about extending the
sort of choice that I think would be involved in the allocation
of council properties. I am sure I know what would happen if that
was generally the case and indeed it does happen when it becomes
the case. We have what are called "saint estates", which
are the estates to which people go who have not exercised the
sort of choice you are talking about, they do not get the estates
that the more articulate people get and I would be deeply disturbed
about that. One of the problems with the argument is we have to
generalise in this context. You gave an example where choice might
work. Let me give an example of a thing which really worries me.
When the Prime Minister made his statement in the summer about
education I actually wrote and said that I thought that my constituency,
as was, might benefit immensely from the creation of a city technology
college. The idea of a special school with additional resources,
with prestige and a new building was what decaying centres like
mine wanted. What Birmingham then says to me is that it would
be marvellous if this city technology college was available to
the people of Sparkbrook and Small Heath exclusively, if there
is going to be choice, if it is going to be open to the entire
population of Birmingham. If it is as good as you make it out
to be it will be for the exclusive youth of Edgbaston, Sutton
Coldfield and the more salubrious suburbs. That is the sort of
choice that worries me.
Q72 Chairman: In principle, though,
the SMF position is very much that it all depends on how you design
particular mechanisms. If it turned out that you could devise
choice mechanisms that advanced the cause of efficiency and effectiveness
and advanced the cause of equity, would you not be quite interested
in them?
Lord Hattersley: Of course I would.
If you hypothesised a situation in which choice is beneficial
for all that we might worry about then I would support it, but
my position is that that is not beneficial.
Q73 Chairman: That seems to me a
naïve a priori position as opposed to one which is
negotiating the evidence.
Lord Hattersley: This is not Tawney
anymore, this is George Moore: "If good is good, I am in
favour of good".
Chairman: I think it is time for Anne
Campbell.
Q74 Mrs Campbell: Could I go back
to your two classes of people, one of whom exercises choice and
the other who does not. There are various reasons why those who
do not exercise choice are not able to do so. In the case of schools
it is because they are living in the wrong areas and they cannot
afford to live in the posher catchment areas or perhaps because
they are not quite so well educated so they do not have as much
knowledge and expertise. One way of overcoming that is to offer
professional advice to people and we already have an example of
that in the public sector. I want to take you back to the system
that we introduced in about 1998 where people who were trying
to get back into work, very often lone parents coming back into
work, were allocated a personal adviser to help them through the
myriad of choices that you had to make about whether you worked
part-time, full-time, whether you travel, whether you do some
retraining, whether you work evenings so your partner can look
after the children or whatever. Those personal advisers appear
to have worked very well because we have a lot more people back
into work now than we had in 1997. Can you see any advantage in
offering people who at the moment do not exercise choice some
better means of making sure that they can get the choice they
need?
Lord Hattersley: Of course that
produces an improvement and it means that some people who would
not have the courage or the self-confidence to pursue their own
interests would be persuaded to do so and helped to do so by the
sort of people that you describe, but it would still leave us
with the problem of a shortage of resources which means that some
hospitals and some schools are regarded as better than others—and
we can make beg the question for a moment whether that is a proper
description or "better"—and it would leave us
with the problem of who chose the better schools and hospitals
and who are left with the rest. I do not think it would help more
than marginally.
Q75 Mrs Campbell: Is it not true
that the way that the Government has been organising its secondary
education means there are a lot more specialist schools? I have
got six schools in my constituency: one is an ecumenical school
and four of the others have specialist school status. People are
not necessarily choosing schools on the basis that they are better
than other schools, they may be choosing them on the basis that
they would like their child to go to a school that specialised
in music or sport or whatever. Quite honestly, middle class professional
parents can make that choice very easily but other parents may
not be able to do so. Do you not think some sort of advisory service
is essential if we are going to ensure equity in these cases?
Lord Hattersley: Let us deal with
examples. I think it is easier to talk about this in terms of
examples than in generalities. The specialist schools raise a
very interesting issue of education as well as choice because
they have different effects in different areas. If it is an urban
area where there are two or three specialist schools and two or
three comprehensive schools which are not specialist for one reason
or another, I have no doubt at all that that in itself creates
a hierarchy of schools with all the problems that I see in selective
education, because parents and teachers and local authorities
see in their minds the idea that the specialist school is somehow
better than the non-specialist school and the hierarchy works
exactly. In other areas specialist schools are denying choice.
One of the things that we have to understand is that the argument
about the failure of comprehensive schools is very largely an
urban argument. There are counties all over the country where
comprehensive schools with their own natural catchment area are
meeting everybody's need. In fact, I live in such an area. In
the area covered by that school there is great concern that the
school is going to become a specialist school for no other reason
than it gets extra money, which I understand entirely, but people
are saying if we become a performing arts school how will the
farmer's lads from up the valleys feel about going to a performing
arts school or if we become a sports school, how would the girls
who take piano lessons in the market town feel about going to
a sports school? I think almost every example of choice has to
be judged, as the Chairman has said, on its merits and I think
more often than not the merits come down against choice as an
instrument of policy because the hierarchy is developed in people's
minds and when the hierarchy is there some people get the best
and some people get what is left over.
Q76 Mr Liddell-Grainger: You say
in your paper, "No doubt the world looks different from Islington."
Lord Hattersley: Yes.
Q77 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Specialist
schools in my area have been a great boom, they have done wonders.
You made the point about Derbyshire. I have a very big rural constituency
in Somerset and specialist schools have been extremely good, the
Government have got it right. Do you not think it is an opportunity
for people to specialise in something that may better them for
their future life?
Lord Hattersley: It may be, but
in the example I have given and in your county example it happens
to be a diminution of choice. The school is specialising in one
thing and the opportunities to do other things are reduced. The
myth of the Department of Education is that they cannot do all
the other things to the same degree, but of course they do not.
I applauded the notion that every school should become a specialist
school because it breaks down the concept of hierarchy. You have
to examine how it applies in different circumstances. I think
what the education departments are now thinking of, which is schools
to be called specialist schools but they do not specialise because
they want a wide range of subjects, is probably the answer, ie
they get the money and they do not have to concentrate on sport
or maths or performing arts.
Q78 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Choice is
interesting. We have one secondary and you go or you do not go,
you do not have choice. They have got technology status which
has been a boon to an area which desperately needs inward investment.
Surely that is the right sort of choice.
Lord Hattersley: You say there
is one school for the whole rural catchment area and there is
no choice. There is an immense amount of choice. One of the great
advantages of the comprehensive system is that it provides more
choice but it provides it within a single building or a single
institution. The comprehensive system provides far more choice
than I had when I was shuffled off to a grammar school at eleven
and far more choice than I would have had if I had not passed
the 11 Plus. Within the comprehensive school the choice is there.
Mr Liddell-Grainger: I have been looking
through some of your Guardian work—I do not always
read the Guardian, I only read mass circulation papers—and
you are not a choice man. You like the more structured way of
education or structured way of health or structured way of delivering
public services. You do not strike me as a choice person at all.
Q79 Chairman: I think that is probably
an accurate summary of the articles.
Lord Hattersley: It depends on
the context in which I am so described. My paper says that choice
as a method of allocating public services is certainly possible.
I am not in favour of that because I think it will result in the
people who most need help getting less help, at least comparatively,
perhaps absolutely, than they are getting now. I confess that
my entire political existence has been biased in favour of what
was in my youth the urban poor, they turned into the brown urban
poor when I became the MP for Birmingham, but they are a group
of people who are neglected right now by both political parties
and choice in my view will be a disadvantage to them and somebody
ought to say something on their behalf.
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