Blairite and class warrior: Jackie Ashley meets Margaret Hodge, higher education minister
For those who think New Labour is all simperingly rightwing, and has no use for a bit of class war these days, there is at least one obvious reply: Margaret Hodge. The higher education minister is on the warpath and the privately educated children of the middle classes are in her sights. Labour has long had an internal argument about whether it believes in equality (Roy Hattersley) or "equality of opportunity" (Tony Blair et al). But if students from comprehensive schools cannot get in to the good universities then it is all for nothing anyway. That is the view of Ms Hodge, former leader of Islington council at the height of its "loony left" days, and now a Blairite minister.
She does not dodge New Labour's record in opening up higher education to poorer students. Figures just published by the London School of Economics confirm what she already knew: more people are going into higher education, but it is the middle classes who are benefiting: the social spread has narrowed under Labour. So Labour's idea of opening up higher education to all has failed, I suggest. She nods. "That so far has failed - the gap has widened." Hodge doesn't mind admitting her disappointment: "It was a shock to me." It is, she suspects, all down to class: "I've spent most of my adult life engaged in one bit or other of the public sector and I have never come across a part that is so strongly influenced by class."
She is engaged on a 10-year strategy, which she knows is going to be hard. "Culture change is never easy, and that's what we're about." Her department is funding trailers going round schools to convince poorer children that they could go to university too. But the universities themselves have to change as well. "I think they've got to be rather more innovative about how they recruit; it's a matter of really hunting out the brightest kids."
That risks alienating those middle class parents who pay for a private education in the hope of securing an easy university entry. "It mustn't be a system where the school you went to determines the likelihood of your getting a place at university ... if they achieve there will be opportunities for them, but they should not achieve on the basis of ability to pay."
Part of the problem is the issue of student debts and tuition fees, which has been the most torrid part of this year's education spending review. Ever since the last election, when tuition fees were a strong "doorstep issue", there has been abattle in Whitehall over their future. But Hodge is clear that they are not going to be scrapped: "We are still going to require a contribution from students and their families, so that those who benefit from higher education contribute towards it."
She insists that the basic argument is over. The so called graduate premium, the extra earnings graduates gain on average, is still holding up: "It's worth £400,000 on average, over your lifetime, so we've got to shift from believing that it's a cost to seeing it as an investment. You earn on average 35% more if you're a graduate."
Encourage
Yes, but surely it is those very students she is trying to encourage - those from poorer backgrounds - who will be least inclined to take on the burden of huge debts? The minister accepts that "debt aversion is particularly strong among people from lower income backgrounds", but she says pointedly: "Even in this golden heyday, which never really existed, this golden heyday when everybody got grants, you still didn't get working class kids into universities." Nor is she impressed by the Scottish experience, where the government's own target of getting 50% of young people into higher education by 2010 has already been achieved. Surely that has something to do with the fact there are no tuition fees there? "No," says Hodge, "it's wrong to suggest that's an explanation." The Scots do things differently, she says, with many students starting further education at 16.
Hodge's own Barking constituency has the lowest percentage of people going into higher education in the country. She is concerned about the alienation of many of her constituents from the political process and has just conducted a survey of 200 people there aged 18 to 25. The results, she says, are "incredibly depressing". Ninety-two per cent agreed that "politicians don't understand the needs of young people", 90% agreed that "the way politicians talk has no relevance to my life in Barking" and 89% agreed that "young people have lots of feelings on politics, just nowhere to voice them".
This, she says with passion, is what it is all about. "For God's sake, why are we in politics? Because we believe politics is vital to change our world, but if nobody believes in us, or believes we matter - well, that's terribly important and we've got to get engaged in that."
She says she wishes she knew the answers: "I'm going to try to localise how I do politics. That's just a practical thing, you're a minister, it's time, so I've got to carve out the time to do this." But Labour generally has to give MPs more time in their constituencies to work with alienated voters and supporters. It is a message she has been taking forthrightly to Number 10.
But she believes politicians should leave "the Westminster village" intellectually, as well as physically. "We're too obsessed with the Westminster village and nothing shows it better than the last few weeks. The Westminster hothouse doesn't mean a thing out there. We've got to get back to the real world." The row over Black Rod and the prime minister's place at the Queen Mother's funeral had, she said, caused nothing but laughter at a recent European council she'd been attending in Bratislava. No one could believe the British newspapers were concentrating on something so trivial - "and they laugh in my constituency too," she adds.
Scapegoating
No, real issues, as Hodge has found in her survey, include crime and housing - quality of life issues. Crime was cited by 62% of her respondents as being the thing they worry most about, and that, she fears, is leading to the scapegoating of asylum seekers. Hodge has personal reasons for feeling passionately about the issue: "I am an immigrant. I came here from Egypt when I was four or five." Her parents had met in Egypt: "My mother fleeing from Nazism in Austria, and my father fleeing from unemployment in Germany in the early 30s. I always thought we were economic migrants. Actually I only discovered recently my dad was locked up in jail and he came out and said, 'we're leaving'. The British gave us a visa and my father was eternally grateful to this country and were he alive today, seeing his wayward daughter a part of the establishment, he would be so proud."
And that perspective does not make this minister keen on aspects of Tony Blair's anti-migrant policies debated this weekend at the Seville summit, particularly the notion of clawing back EU aid from developing countries. Thankfully, she says, it looks as though the idea has been dropped - "it was never going to work".
In the debate over asylum, Hodge believes the government has the rhetoric wrong: "What we're losing is the value of people who come in. We're so obsessed with the fear that it will create a rightwing backlash that we fail to argue the contribution that asylum seekers can make."
In some ways Hodge can still sound like the radical council leader she used to be. I ask what prompted her journey from "loony left" to New Labour. She's still proud of some of the things she did, she says, but "it's no good having politics through pronouncements, you can't change the world by pronouncement". She confesses too that "resolutionitis", something the Labour left of the 1980s was very keen on, "wasn't particularly helpful". Her council and the Association of London Authorities, which she chaired, opposed the Conservative government's plans for ratecapping. Now, she says, the move away from that campaign "was probably my biggest journey". In the end "it's this taking people with you which is probably the biggest lesson I've learned. You can't change the world from outside."
Well, Hodge is now on the inside, a New Labourite who still lives in the same street in Islington that Tony Blair used to inhabit before his move to Downing Street. She no longer sees him just popping out to post a letter, but doesn't think he's changed that much: "Clearly in terms of the values that we used to talk about, no."
Hodge is not afraid to speak out of turn. It's said that she was denied a government job for several years because she had publicly criticised Blair's hairstyle. So, pro-migrant, bit of a class warrior - she ought to be less popular in Number10 than she is. But then as a Londoner of radical and liberal views, quite close to where Blair likes to think he came from, she is maybe too close to the heart of progressive politics to be censured.
The CV
Margaret Eve Hodge, MBEBorn September 8 1944, Egypt
Married with four children
Education Bromley high school; Oxford high; London School of Economics
Career history Teaching and market research1966-73. Councillor, London borough of Islington 1973-94; chairwoman, housing committee 1975-79; deputy leader of council 1981-82; leader of council 1982-92. Senior public sector consultant, Price Waterhouse 1992-94
Political history MP for Barking since June 1994. Select committees: member: deregulation 1996-97, chairwoman: education and employment 1996-98. Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the DfEE (minister for employment and equal opportunities) 1998-2001; minister of state for lifelong learning and higher education since 2001
