Charles Walker outlines his desire for all young people to be able to enjoy the advantages that he had and supports mechanisms that assist young people from difficult backgrounds to enter higher education.

Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): This is a truly uplifting debate. I was wondering what I would do in Parliament today, and I looked at the Order Paper and noticed that the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) was going to speak. He gave one of the best speeches I have heard in this place in the four years for which I have been a Member of Parliament. It is a great privilege to take part in this debate.

Our routes of travel may be different, but most Members of Parliament want to get this country to the same destination. I did not go into politics as a prosperous, middle-class man to ensure that other people did not enjoy my advantages. I went into politics to make sure that as many people as possible could have and enjoy the advantages that I had and continue to have. I represent a Hertfordshire seat, but Hertfordshire is not simply the sunlit leafy uplands of the home counties; there are many poor parts of Hertfordshire, albeit perhaps not as many as in London. However, there are deprived parts of the county.

When I visit the schools, particularly the primary schools, in the difficult areas, it is wonderful to see all the shiny, smiley faces of the young people—the four, five, six and seven-year-olds—who are busily learning, creating, and absorbing the information around them. They are served by dedicated, hard-working teachers, but the real sadness is that when I talk to the teachers, I find that they can already identify the young people in their care who will struggle to make a success of their lives. All that goodness and all those smiles, yet not all those young children will go on to achieve great things, although the potential is there when they are young. We politicians in this place need to make sure that we allow that potential to blossom and flower.

I had the advantage of an extremely good education. I was lucky: my parents could afford to send me to a good school, and of course I did moderately well in my exams. I am concerned, however, about the gap between youngsters who go to Eton and the best public schools in this country, and youngsters who go to difficult comprehensives, where getting an education is difficult, not because they do not want it but because the circumstances in which it is offered are difficult, with less motivated classmates and parents. For years I thought that it would be wrong in every way to discriminate against children who went to Eton; I thought that someone who got four A*s at Eton should be guaranteed a place at Oxford, Cambridge or one of the other great universities of this country. But at last I am beginning to realise that perhaps three Bs from an inner-city comprehensive may be worth more than three or four A*s from Eton. It may not always be the case, but such a child may well have more potential to go on and achieve true greatness than the child who is spoon-fed at one of our great public schools.

I do not mean any disrespect to our public schools, but I was travelling out to France and, finding myself sitting next to two wonderful young men who were teachers at Eton, I said, “What’s it like teaching these young people?” They replied, “It’s easy: they’re self-motivating; they’re programmed to achieve; they compete with each other; there’s no view in their mind that they will fail; they’re an absolute joy to teach.” Those two young men were truly charming, and I wish them every success in the world.

Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and is referring to a philosophy in which I have always believed. In fact, Harvard university—the alma mater both of the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), and of myself—makes huge attempts in its admissions process to look not just at the kids who go to the private schools in New York or Boston. Its whole admissions policy is geared to looking at kids from Watts or Harlem to see how they have performed relative to their peer group, not to kids from private schools. Harvard takes them in with the view that, through its “greenhouse effect”, they can then go on to achieve greatness. That does not always work, but we should think about bringing that philosophy to our higher education institutions a little more.

Mr. Walker: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I totally agree with that philosophy. I should like to see more of it in this country.

We cannot socially engineer a perfect solution; it is not within our gift in this place today. However, collectively—we can have robust and passionate disagreement, but we can also come together for this purpose—we can have the very highest aspirations for the young people of this country.

I realise that we politicians are not in good odour, but I am so lucky, because in my constituency there is a wonderful young lady aged 16 who wrote to all the main political parties saying, “I’m interested in politics; I’d like to get involved,” and, thank God, we were the first party to get back in touch with her. She is a truly remarkable young woman and she comes from a loving home. I do not call it a disadvantaged home; she just comes from a home where she has had fewer advantages than I had. She is a carer to members of her family, but despite that, was also Hertfordshire’s volunteer of the year two years ago. She is the No. 1 academic performer in her school, a truly wonderful person who will go on to be twice if not three times the person I am. That is just fabulous. I want more people who have not had the advantages that Charles Walker has had to go on to be twice, three times and four times the person I am, and I want many of those people to live in my constituency.

As I said a few moments ago, this is a truly uplifting debate. It may not be well attended, but I think that the people in the Public Gallery have walked in on something very special, and it has been a real honour to take part.

4.19 pm

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