It’s time to cure the cancer of inequality

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/14/time-to-cure-cancer-of-inequality

Version 0 of 1.

We are not, it appears, a happy country. Our popular discourse is shrouded with a sense that something is wrong. The negativity, best exemplified in that awful catchphrase “Broken Britain”, lingers on like the dark days of winter.

Will Hutton’s new book How Good We Can Be points to a British crisis. A crisis of purpose, a crisis of self and a crisis of confidence in our institutions. We neither know what we as a nation are for, nor as he puts it, whether there is even a “we” in the first place.

The root cause of our unease is at once obvious, yet largely absent from our public debate. It is inequality, the gnawing, gaping, grotesque inequality of our age. Yes, we have Thomas Piketty and the rest, but the discussion remains somehow apart from the mainstream. Why isn’t it on the main stage, why aren’t we more angry?

Hutton calls that inequality a cancer. It emerges imperceptibly. Save for the occasional unexplained weakness or complaint, it is dormant, until one day the cancer can metastasise with catastrophic – perhaps fatal – effects. This cancer is not simply income inequality. It is inequality of opportunity, inequality of access, inequality of life chances from top to bottom.

We cannot allow the disease to continue to spread unchecked. So our discussion around inequality must go deeper than before. Let’s take one example: education, the key to opportunity.

Often, we talk about exam results, class sizes and good schools but inequality can be ingrained in the 1,000 days between conception and the age of two. That’s when a child’s brain starts to develop; when the brain has a “plasticity”, making it receptive to change and develops according to experience in ways it never will again.

Two babies born just yards apart in London’s St Thomas’ Hospital can be worlds apart by the time they reach school. One leaves the hospital and is exposed to exactly the sort of loving, nurturing environment she needs to succeed. The other is already behind at birth and held back at every turn. Maternal stress during pregnancy, insufficient nutrition and sleep during the vital first few months can all have long-lasting effects on the brain.

The Department for Education’s Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project found that the quality of a child’s relationships and learning experiences in the family have more influence on future achievement than innate ability, material circumstances or the quality of pre-school and school provision.

Indeed, gaps in child development at 22 months across basic skills such as language correlate with labour market performance at the age of 26. It is heart-breaking to think that so much can go so wrong so early in a child’s life.

Fifteen years further ahead, two more children – one at a good school with every support, the other nowhere near. Even with identical exam results, the inequality of opportunity mounts. The work experience with a parent’s friend; the introduction to a former pupil now a senior executive; the social circles and networks that help children of the well connected get on. The ability to take on an unpaid internship, the ability to take a risk knowing that there is a safety net beneath. The lifting of horizons, even the confidence to apply for the good job and give a good account of oneself at interview.

These are the areas of cultural and personal capital that help some young people get on and leave others without the faintest idea of how they can. In the growing intangible economy of knowledge and skills, computer programming and intellectual property.

When Antony Jenkins, chairman of Barclays, meets 17- and 18-year-olds, the first thing he does is teach them how to shake hands properly and look people in the eye. At once extraordinary and obvious: hundreds of thousands of our children are behind from “hello”.

Disadvantage doesn’t even itself out, it piles up. The wonder is not that so few go on to succeed from the circumstances I describe but so many.

The point isn’t just a moral one – which alone represents an unanswerable case to act. Even the coldest ivory tower economist would tell you that if, for example, 10% of your population never have a chance to succeed then you are wasting 10% of your potential. We are not so rich that we have so much potential to spare.

The game is rigged and the result is an inequality that is becoming hard for our society to bare. Nowhere is that more obvious than in London, where inequality is threatening to tear our city apart.

Without real action we are heading for a fall. But, as the title of Hutton’s book suggests, these problems are not set in stone. “How good we can be” is no cry in the dark. At its core is an argument of optimism, of what we can be.

Why can’t we become number one in the world for innovation; why can’t we be the richest, most dynamic country in Europe? In the capital, why can’t we build one London, not two, where everyone has a chance to share in the city’s success?

A better Britain is within reach. But it means creating a society where everyone has a chance to get on. Where we do more to nurture the very young so that every child arrives for their first day at school with a core set of basic skills. It means helping every young person into the world of work. Where businesses offer more apprenticeships and open up their own positions to a wider social mix, but it means smaller things as well, such as successful individuals offering up their time to mentor teenagers so that every young person has access to the networks and the know-how to do well.

We have the raw materials. We have some of the world’s best universities, we speak the world’s language; in London, we have the world’s most popular city. We have an entrepreneurial spirit and a strong reputation – but we’re stuck in second gear.

There are lots of ways in which Britain needs to change – a change of government would be a good start – but there’s one big thing we can do to put our country back on the front foot: we have to unleash the possibility of equality. We will be a better, happier and more successful country when we tackle the defining issue of our age – the cancer of inequality that is holding us back.

Tessa Jowell is Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood