---

Equality Bill

My Lords, if Michael Young—Lord Young of Dartington—were here now he would be holding his head in his hands, but I do not know whether that would be in laughter or in despair. Michael Young wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy, one of the most misunderstood and yet important books on this subject. The lesson of that book is that, yes, you can move toward greater equality of opportunity and remove the clearly unjust, inefficient and discriminatory measures that prevent people like the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit—and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, if he wishes to be on that side—from fulfilling their natural abilities and contributing to society as they want to, yet if you have equality of opportunity and only that, without a care for equality of outcome, you will create that kind of society that Wilkinson and Pickett identify as being grossly inadequate.