Why landlords should pass a fitting person test and criminal record checks

Penny Anderson in The Guardian


Being a landlord is a privilege, and it shouldn’t be available to everybody: with the power they have over their tenants should come a sense of responsibility

 

‘Owners misunderstand, ignore or forget legal requirement to issue proper notices to quit, or the need for prior warning of inspection visits.’ Photograph: Alamy


There are more private landlords than ever. Many are reasonable. Some are even excellent, but letting property is largely unrestricted.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has highlighted the failure of his predecessor Boris Johnson to sign up 100,000 landlords to his much vaunted London Rental Standard, which aims to help landlords with things such as having a gas safety check every year, and the laws around deposits and fire safety. After two years in operation, the scheme had attracted fewer than 2,000 landlords in addition to the 13,300 it inherited.

The files reveal that officials warned the mayor at the outset that his target was unattainable and that it would take “more than 50 years to accredit a sufficient number of landlords to meet the target”. Another note read: “We simply don’t have the resources to proactively enforce the London Rental Standard, which leaves us with an unacceptable reputational risk.” Johnson’s betrayal of renters in the capital after all the promises made is embarrassing for him, but a disaster for tenants. There is no doubt that the job needs doing.

Dilettante amateur property investors often know little about basic good practice, the law or simply what’s best for everyone when it comes to running their business in a civilised, humane fashion – and yes, it is a business, with the potential for profit and loss. They might be reluctant or “forced” rentiers (a term I prefer to landlord), with the family home in negative equity, compelled to rent it out if they want to move on. Outside London this is still a reality, and with the predicted house-price crash on Brexit, that practice may become more widespread.

This situation fuels the likelihood that tenants will be turfed out as soon as possible when the building increases in value. Remember that all tenants live under the threat of just two months’ notice when their initial assured shorthold tenancy rolls over. There is no security for renters.

There are recurring issues, such as owners who do not understand the concept of reasonable wear and tear expecting their properties to remain pristine and unmarked, even when the low-quality carpets and sofas they chose were threadbare to begin with. This in turn propagates the now traditional unlawful deposit retention/deduction battle, which can see mundane events – the simple act of using the sofa perhaps – cited as justification for the retention of hundreds of pounds, obliging tenants to fight for, and rarely succeed in getting, the return of hard-earned money paid up-front.

‘There are recurring issues, such as owners not understanding the concept of reasonable wear and tear, even when the low-quality carpets and sofas they chose were threadbare to begin with.’ Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

There are the problems of legal management. Owners misunderstand, ignore or forget the legal requirement to issue proper notices to quit, or the need for prior warning of inspection visits, using the power of thought or suggestion instead. Some owners I have rented from imagine they can let themselves in whenever they see fit.

Let’s be reasonable. We know that property doesn’t manage itself, and can be costly to maintain. The obligation to repair causes tension once owners, even the best-intentioned ones, grow acquainted with the expense of emergency out-of-hours plumbing.

Some owners – through indolence or meanness – would rather let the place rot; a friend’s landlord knowingly allows water from the leaky tiles to be absorbed by cavity wall insulation. Ultimately, his roof will cave in, but he doesn’t seem to care – either about the tenant or the ultimate expense. Other owners issue “revenge” notices – where tenants are forced out for insisting on damage being made good. Tenants who stand up for their rights are frequently viewed as troublemakers.

Tenants are not angelic. Some give as good as they get in the owner-tenant relationship. But the balance of power between the two is clearly in the landlord’s favour. Isn’t it time for power with more responsibility?

A requirement for landlord training would allow neophyte property moguls to escape being bogged down in pointless, petty battles with tenants. They also would learn about both the availability (and wisdom) of landlord insurance and the pros and cons of letting agents, who charge up to 15% of income and often do very little to earn it.

Being a landlord is a profitable privilege, but it isn’t one that should be automatically available to everybody. It should be earned by those who prove themselves knowledgeable and capable, having passed both a “fitting person” test and a criminal records check. Don’t forget: landlords possess keys to their tenants’ homes, and need to understand obligations. Owners would also benefit from better safeguards and more clarity because both would improve their relationships with tenants, and contented tenants stay longer in their properties.

The rentier economy marches on and will continue to do so, because set against the decline in pensions and increasing job insecurity, property is regarded as a solid guarantee against poverty. The fact that people make money from renting isn’t a problem. Nor is the fact that these transactions occur in the private sector. What’s missing and badly needed is the idea of responsibility.

Private education is guarded by an electric fence

Suzanne Moore in The Guardian


Employers are told to spot ‘potential not polish’, but polish is about the tiny, monstrous ways that class functions – deliberately baffling to outsiders

 

‘As a mechanism for maintaining privilege, private education, with its gated communities of the elite, simply works.’ Photograph: Peter Titmuss/Alamy


Everyone stop being horrible to posh people! It’s not their fault they have everything. It’s the fault of the schools they went to. I blame the parents. They refuel the class system by sending their offspring to private schools because they are not entirely daft. As a mechanism for maintaining privilege, private education, with its gated communities of the elite, simply works. It has worked through thick and thin. Its pupils may be both.

That 7% figure of people who are privately educated, and who run just about everything, has stalled. Sometimes, people like me squawk about it but, as I have never learned to talk proper, it’s dismissed as “the politics of envy”, an idiotic phrase that reduces justified politics to a personal grudge. Occasionally, though, one of the gilded boys has a go at levelling the playing field. They do love a playing field.

So here we have cabinet minister Matt Hancock (King’s) suggesting that employers check the socio-economic backgrounds of applicants to stop the 93% of us who did not go to private school being discriminated against. Don’t people put their schools down on their CVs anyway? Wouldn’t it be easier to ask applicants if they knew much about skiing and refuse to interview anyone who did?

Still, Hancock’s vapid suggestion was enough to cause Lord Waldegrave, provost of Eton, to have a meltdown and complain that the privately educated could be discriminated against. The poor babies. How they bawl, not when the playing field is level but when anyone ventures near its electric fence.

All this came about as part of Cameron’s “life chances” agenda, some sort of baleful drivel about enhancing social mobility. It is patently obvious that social mobility does not start at a job interview but long before it. When employers are told to spot “potential not polish”, we may ask where on the periodic table this mysterious element “polish” appears.

I have never been able to locate it, that’s for sure. The idea that the existing system can be levelled out by allowing a few escapees from the lower orders into the public school milieu of law, politics, media, academia, judiciary and the City is somewhat cack-handed. For polish is surely about the tiny, monstrous ways that class functions, a series of codes and signals that enable small gangs of people to recognise each other as clubbable, employable, breedable.

It is deliberately baffling to outsiders. When I first started working in the media I was astonished at how everyone seemed to know each other from college. Then I began to realise they had been in schools with “houses”, small class sizes and peculiar sports, and shared the assumption that everything that came out of their mouths was innately fascinating.

On a Radio 4 show, I heard a producer bemoan my “polytechnic accent”. At every meeting I would feel unwashed and somewhat dazed, however long I had spent getting ready. Class manifests as acute discomfort. It’s not about thinking a Findus Crispy Pancake is a nice dinner, it is shared assumptions about what matters.

Lynsey Hanley’s book Respectable charts extremely well her journey into the middle class and all the anxiety it produces. But it bears little relationship to my journey, because there are many different working-class cultures.

What is shared, though, is that to be working class in a middle-class environment requires you to learn certain codes, and once you learn a code you can deconstruct it. The condescending nature of all the guff on private school education is part of this code. This system produces the brightest and the best, if the brightest and the best means booming confidence, inflexible thinking and the regurgitation of specific histories. Thus we have a chancellor who, without studying economics, believes himself an expert on it, whatever the figures say, whatever renowned economists say. Private schools sell self-belief.

In working-class culture, self-belief is played out as bravado and different kinds of knowledge are valued. I don’t romanticise it, as it’s stultifying. Everything is about what can be shown: practical skills, big tellies, getting really dressed up. What can’t be shown, that which is abstract, is not to be dwelt on, so I am forever glad I got away.

Social mobility, though, involves living with restraint. One must bite one’s tongue in order not to bite the hand that feeds you. Do not be prejudiced against your superiors. Just accept they got into Oxbridge by dint of their brainiac qualities. It was simply handy that, while you spent your teenage years sitting on a wall, they were competing in debating societies, editing their own magazine or playing the harp.

Here is the mystical polish. Sadly the self-improving element of the working class beloved by the likes of Raymond Williams, enacted though evening classes and further education, has been killed dead. So, instead we have the engineers of social class suggesting they pull a few of us on to the lifeboats. It is no real answer. What is it about private education that I would want for more children? It is confidence. The confidence to ask whether those in charge are actually so much cleverer than the rest of us, the confidence to insist that employing a normal person is not discrimination, and most of all the confidence to know that “power can be taken, but not given”.

What is TTIP? The controversial trade deal proposal explained

Julia Kollewe in The Guardian

The EU claims it will create millions of jobs and bring down the cost of living – but others say it is a threat to public services such as the NHS
 

An anti-TTIP banner is held aloft at a rally before the G7 summit in Munich in June. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters



If you are not yet familiar with the acronym TTIP it is likely you soon will be. TheTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a proposed trade agreement and the subject of an ongoing series of negotiations between the EU and US aimed at creating the world’s biggest free trade zone spanning the north Atlantic.

It would dwarf all past free trade deals: the European commission reckons it could boost the size of the EU economy by €120bn (£85bn) – equal to 0.5% of GDP – and the US economy by €95bn – 0.4% of GDP.

It would create several million jobs dependent on exports, Brussels says, while consumers would enjoy cheaper products and services. The average European household of four would be around €500 a year better off as a result of wage increases and price reductions, according to the study commissioned from the Centre for Economic Policy Research in 2013.

The plan is to cut tariff barriers – levies imposed to control cross-border trade – to zero and other non-tariff barriers by 25-50%. The study insists this is a realistic prospect. The business sectors that would benefit most include industries based around metal products, processed food and chemicals, and especially the motor industry.

In the UK (and elsewhere), the main beneficiaries would be big businesses, as smaller firms are less likely to trade outside Britain. The UK could benefit to the tune of £10bn, which means the average household would be £400 a year better off.

The main aim of TTIP is to reduce regulatory barriers to trade, in areas ranging from food safety law to environmental rules and banking regulations. Opponents argue it will water down important EU regulations.

Food safety has become a major stumbling block in the negotiations as both sides prepare for the latest round – the 10th – which takes place from 13 to 17 July in Brussels.

The talks have been conducted largely in secret, but opposition to TTIP is growing on the ground. More than 2 million people in Europe have signed an online petition against the proposed deal. Campaigners have been outspoken about TTIP’s potential dangers and have painted it as a threat to European democracy.
In Britain, MPs on the all-party business, innovations and skills committee havedenounced the government’s firm support for TTIP amid fears for the NHS and other public services.

Concerns are mounting that TTIP could lead to more privatisation, with the prospect of US corporations providing vital UK public services such as transport, education, water and health.

As highlighted in this Guardian video, another major concern is whether standards will drop. For example, the EU bans cosmetics tested on animals but the US does not. Another question is what happens if EU countries want some protection, for instance Italy for its Parma ham, and the UK for its pork pies.
One of the most controversial elements of the trade proposal is the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision. ISDS provisions have been included in many trade deals since the 1980s, to encourage overseas investment in poorer countries. It means private investors can ask a tribunal of international arbitratorsto judge if a government has treated them unfairly – and can get compensation.

Over the past decade some big, mainly American companies, such as tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris, have used ISDS to claim rights. The provision would in theory allow private investors to sue governments for the loss of future profits due to decisions made by national parliaments. Critics say it could be used to attack the UK’s NHS by making privatisations of specific services harder to reverse.



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TTIP: the key to freer trade, or corporate greed?

Some say the US/EU trade deal that could be agreed this year will open up markets and promote UK growth. Others fear it will drive down wages and promote privatisation

Philip Inman in The Guardian


Cheap American olive oil could, in a few years’ time, be sitting on supermarket shelves next to the Tuscan single estate varieties loved by British foodies. At present a prohibitive tariff on US imports effectively prices them out of contention.

But a groundbreaking trade deal could lower the $1,680-a-tonne tariff on US olive oil to match the $34 a tonne the US charges on imports from the EU. Or the tariffs could disappear altogether. Either way, Greek, Spanish and Italian olive farmers must fear the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a deal that aims to create a level playing field between them and massive US agri-businesses.

Trade deals were once seen as a panacea for global poverty. In the 1990s, the World Trade Organisation was formed to harmonise cross-border regulations on everything from cars to pharmaceuticals and cut tariffs in order to promote the free flow of goods and services around the world.

There was always a fear that, far from being a winning formula for all, lower tariffs would favour the rich and powerful and crucify small producers, who would struggle to compete in an unprotected environment.

The effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), signed by the US, Mexico and Canada in 1993, appeared to justify that fear: it became in later years a cause celebre for anti-poverty campaigners, angered by the plight of Mexican workers. Not only were they subjected to low wages and poor working conditions by newly relocated US corporations – and, as consumers, to the relentless marketing power of Walmart, Coca Cola and the rest – but the major fringe benefit of cutting corruption remained illusory.

This year the US hopes to sign what many believe will be Nafta’s direct successor – TTIP. Should it get the green light from Congress and the EU commission, the agreement will be a bilateral treaty between Europe and the US, and, just like Nafta before it, outside the ambit of a gridlocked WTO.

Supporters say it will be an improvement on its predecessor because the main proponents are a liberal US president and a European commission that considers itself concerned with workers and consumers. Why, the commission asks, would 28 relatively affluent member states with concerns about high unemployment, stagnant wages, welfare provision and climate change agree to a charter that undermines workers’ rights, attacks public services or reduces environmental regulations?

TTIP is also billed as an agreement between equals that allows both sides to promote trade: it is claimed that the UK’s national income could be raised by £4bn-£10bn annually, or up to £100bn over 10 years. That amounts to a 0.3 percentage point boost to GDP, which would have pushed this year’s expected 2.4% growth to 2.7%.

  An anti-TTIP demonstration in Berlin this year. Photograph: Wolfram Steinberg/EPA

But it strikes fear into the hearts of many, who believe it to be a Trojan horse for rapacious corporations. These corporations, hellbent on driving down costs to enhance shareholder value, spell the end for Europe’s cosy welfare states and their ability to shield fledgling or, in the case of steel and coal, declining industries from the harsh realities of open competition.

TTIP has been compared to the 1846 Corn Law abolition, which either swept away protectionist tariffs that impoverished millions of workers, or protected a vital source of food and led Karl Marx to ask: “What is free trade under the present condition of society?” His answer was: “It is the freedom which capital has to crush the worker.” Is that the case with TTIP? Here are five key factors to consider.

Health and public services

From the moment TTIP became part of President Barack Obama’s growth strategy, critics have feared that he little realised the expansionary intentions of US healthcare companies or was too distracted to care. The concern relates to the prospect of EU countries, under pressure from rising healthcare costs, handing over major parts of healthcare provision to the private sector. Once services are in private hands, say critics, TTIP rules will prevent them being taken back into state control.

Since these fears were voiced, trade negotiators have excluded provisions that would have allowed firms to sue governments for the loss of health and public services contracts once they expired. This allows the UK’s rail franchise system and the contracting-out of health services to continue under time-limited contracts.

But the US private health industry, which is the largest in the world, views a Europe struggling with the needs of an ageing baby-boomer generation as ripe for the picking. For this reason alone, contracting out the distribution of drugs, the supply of medical devices and the provision of vital services could prove irresistible.

Dispute resolution

A little known facet of every trade deal is a separate form of arbitration for the businesses covered by the agreement, allowing them to avoid the civil courts. As such, the investor-state dispute resolution (ISDS) gives foreign investors the power to sue a government for introducing legislation that harms their investment.

Famously, it was used by big tobacco to sue the Australian government when it introduced plain cigarette packaging. Before and after the scandal, other governments have come under legal challenge from corporations concerned that public policymaking is denying them revenues.

In spring 2014, UN official and human rights lawyer Alfred de Zayas called for a moratorium on TTIP negotiations until ISDS was excluded. He warned that the secret court tribunals held to settle trade disputes were undemocratic. Their reliance on a small group of specialist lawyers also meant that arbitrators sitting in judgment were the ones who at other times represented corporate clients.

De Zayas feared that smaller states would find themselves in the same position as many governments in trade disputes, suffering huge legal bills and long delays to public policy reforms. He was joined in his mission by NGOs and, most importantly, by MEPs in Strasbourg.

As a first concession, the US side agreed to prohibit “brass-plate” firms – those that exist only by name in a county, without any employees or activity – from suing a government. This aimed to prevent a repeat of the Australia incident when the Ukrainian arm of tobacco firm Philip Morris, effectively a brass-plate entity, spearheaded the attack on plain packaging.

  European commissioner Cecilia Malmström has proposed an international court of arbitration to settle investor disputes. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/Getty

Many EU politicians said this concession was too easy to circumvent, leaving corporations in a powerful position. So Europe’s chief negotiator, Swedish commissioner Cecilia Malmström, hatched a scheme for an international court of arbitration – an open public forum instead of the private court system. Even her critics said it was a bold move, and unlikely to be accepted by the Americans.

Washington has countered with proposals for a more transparent ISDS court, with live-streamed meetings and the publication of all documents. Not enough, says de Zayas, who wrote recently: “Alas, countless ISDS awards have shown a business bias that shocks the conscience. To the extent that the procedures are not transparent, the arbitrators are not always independent and the annulment procedure is nearly useless, ISDS should be abolished as incompatible with article 14(1) of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] which requires that all suits at law be decided by independent and competent tribunals under the rule of law.”

The two sides have yet to formally discuss either proposal: under deals between the US and Japan and the EU and Canada the issue was barely mentioned, but it is now expected to be among the most contentious.

Regulations

Michael Froman, the US chief negotiator, described the task of harmonising regulations as follows: “For years the US and EU have accepted each other’s inspection of aeroplanes because it was obvious they would not be able to check all the planes landing in their jurisdiction. We seek to expand this practice to other areas.”

So how would Froman apply this to the fact that American cars will still be left-hand drive, restricting their use on British roads? He argues that the cost of imported cars, research and development and testing can still benefit from the harmonisation of regulations on either side of the Atlantic.

Yet there is nothing US food regulators would like less than to accept processed foods tested by EU officials who failed to spot the horsemeat scandal.

And EU regulators are duty bound to reject GM foods, after sustained protests by Europe’s consumers in direct conflict with US farmers. Washington claims it will accept the science when it applies to regulations, which supports GM foods being accepted by the EU as part of TTIP, just as it is part of the WTO agreement.

Tariffs

Dispensing with tariffs seems like a straightforward process compared with tackling complex regulations. Under TTIP, tariffs on goods and services should disappear, though it is expected that some will only be reduced, and others may take years to go the way of history.

Under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) recently agreed, but not yet implemented, between the US, Japan, Australia, Vietnam and other East Asian countries, all goods, from pork to cars, are covered.

A good example of how long it can take for tariffs to come down is found in the case of the 2.5% rate slapped on Japanese car imports to the US: this will start to be incrementally lowered 15 years after the agreement takes effect, halved in 20 years and eliminated in 25 years. In return, Japan will, among other things, lower its tariff on imported beef from 38.5% to 9% over 16 years. A similar programme could be possible under TTIP, with olive oil tariffs lowered over 25 years.

Labour standards and workers’ rights


Japanese trade unions supported the TPP deal, and unions in Europe are expected to follow suit with TTIP. They accept that labour protection rules lie outside the scope of a deal, and that their governments can therefore continue to implement minimum wage legislation and other supportive measures without being sanctioned.

But unions, where they exist, tend to represent workers in successful industries, which naturally welcome access to wider markets. Workers in weaker areas of the economy could find their jobs coming under pressure from harmonised regulations, lower tariffs, or even just exposure to a US rival with a work ethic that denies most employees more than two weeks’ holiday a year.

TTIP is important to the UK government because the US is our biggest market for goods and services outside the EU. It’s seen as especially important for small and medium-sized businesses, which appreciate the lack of language barrier. Britain also has a trade surplus with the US: we export more than we import, which helps counterbalance the country’s huge trade deficit.

Such is the momentum behind the talks that a deal could be agreed by the end of the year, and go before Congress and EU parliaments in 2017. Both sides claim to be making good progress. But the dispute over ISDS and protests from farmers could yet quash Obama’s hopes for US olive oil sales.

Sachin mania: it's about religion

Ahmer Naqvi in Cricinfo

Tendulkar: a cult figure if ever there was one  © Associated Press

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Sachin Tendulkar has finally retired. As I type this, there are a fair few letting out sighs of relief, because the sheer hype and hoopla surrounding his farewell Test series has left many feeling distinctly uncomfortable. The cynical nature of the BCCI's scheduling, the hyper-opportunism displayed by politicians and corporations, and the general hysteria of the crowds has left many decrying the spectacle as slightly unnerving.

As a Pakistani, I have been relatively immune to Sachin's appeal for most of my life. It was only in my more mature years that I came to support any Indian players at all. Even then, it was the likes of Rahul Dravid and perhaps Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni whom I admired, rather than Tendulkar.

Yet over the past few days, the backlash against the Sachin celebration has left me intrigued. Why were certain opinion-makers so visibly aghast at the treatment being accorded Sachin? Why were the sights of delirious crowds being countered with stats showing Sachin to be the 29th best batsman of all time?

The answer lies in an area that many people find to be naive at best and disastrous at worst. It is an area that carries significant political influence, and is always, always an incendiary topic to bring up. The answer lies in religion.

In Europe, and much of the developed world, historically, religion has been the cause of brutal and terrifying political battles over the centuries, which determined not just who ruled but also the intellectual world-view underpinning those governments. Consequently, speaking of religion in Western society can often invoke memories of violence and persecution, and can even be seen to be a resistance to progressive ideas.

In South Asia, religion has been and continues to be a major driver of violence and conflict. In a region that is one of the world's most diverse ethnically, religion often shows up as a fault line in a bewildering array of instances. Yet at the same time, religion (believe it or not) is also the reason why such distinct peoples have managed to live together for thousands of years. The idea of syncretism, which, broadly speaking, refers to the fusion of seemingly contradictory beliefs, is central to life in South Asia.

The prime example of such syncretism is found at festivals or melas held to commemorate the lives of famous saints. From Kabul to Chittagong, these are a ubiquitous feature of the subcontinent, and are attended by pilgrims from near and far. Most importantly, they witness an annihilation of conventional identities. So a saint from one religion has devotees from various faiths. You can have a Muslim saint whose shrine is visited by Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, and others.

It is impossible to distil and explain these practices in a few lines, but to put it simply, the reason such practices exist is because people believe that a truly holy person transcends conventional religious differences. Thus the revered saint becomes a pathway to a more immediate and direct bond with the divine - in a relationship that not only exists outside the regularly prescribed rituals, but is one that is only made possible due to the exalted life and efforts of the saint.

I think this is the context one needs to view Sachin's farewell in.

I am not taking the popular sentiment of calling him "god" and trying to run away with it, and I doubt many people consciously and spiritually see him as a saint on par with the rest. But the sentiment that underlines his retirement and the rapture he is generating cannot be seen as mere sycophancy, commercial exploitation, or celebrity-fuelled hysteria. Undoubtedly, all of these things play a part in this festival, but they are not what it is limited to.

When people ask why all this is being done for one person, or why Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman didn't get such farewells, or why the FTP is being disrupted for one man, they are asking valid questions but ones that are irrelevant to this context. The debate about who was great and who wasn't ends here with the people. Because ultimately, this celebration is not for Sachin, it is for his devotees.

It is for the people who turned to him as a symbol of hope, as a symbol of perseverance. It is for the people who refused to give up because their Sachin hadn't. It is for the people who believed they could break barriers and limitations because Sachin had shown them it could be done. It is for the people who know that it is time to let go of someone they relied upon for their smiles and the unburdening of their sorrows.

Perhaps all this hype and obsession makes "cricket" fans feel uncomfortable. Perhaps there are fans despairing at this cult-like behaviour. Perhaps there are those who feel that all this undermines Sachin's own credibility. To all of them, I paraphrase the patron saint of cricket writers, Hazrat CLR James, when I say: "What do they know of Sachin, who only Sachin know?"

Oxbridge walls that can't be scaled

 

Johann Hari

A blunt, blind admissions system still discriminates in favour of wealthy interview-machines

Thursday, 4 September 2008

Nothing causes a louder shriek in Britain than if you challenge the right of the rich to pass their privilege untouched on to their children. The shadow chancellor George Osborne has just decreed that the richest 1 per cent will – under David Cameron – be allowed to inherit £2 million estates they have done nothing to earn without paying a penny of it towards schools and hospitals. The "horror" of inheritance tax – introduced in the great progressive wave of the Edwardian era – will be over. This has been greeted with a gurgle of pleasure by Conservatives; why should anyone get in the way of wealth "cascading down the generations", as a Tory Prime Minister once put it?

Over the next few months, an even more tender spot for the privileged will be pressed: Oxford and Cambridge admissions. Today, a third of all Oxbridge students come from just 100 top schools. For example, half of the entire intake of £20,000-a-year Westminster School go there every year: some 410 pupils. The wealthy now have a taken-for-granted expectation that their kids will go to the best universities.

Some on the right, like the late Bill Deedes, explained this by saying the wealthy are a genetic over-class who naturally have cleverer children. But there's a hole in the side of this theory: several studies have shown that when rich people adopt kids from poor backgrounds, those children go on to do just as well.

To see how this buying of unearned privilege works, I have to introduce you to two people I know who applied to study Philosophy at the same Cambridge college as me in 1998. The first is a likeable, confident guy whose parents are wealthy businesspeople. Let's call him Andrew. They sent him to one of the most expensive private schools in Britain, and he had never been in a class larger than 12. He was trained for over a year for his Cambridge interview – a near-scientific drill that included one-on-one tuition by Oxbridge graduates, extensive rewriting of his application form "with" a teacher, and even being videoed so his body language could be analysed.

The other person, by contrast, was a chain-smoking teenager brought up on an Enfield estate by her dinner-lady mum. Laura wrote her application alone, and she had no preparation for her interview at all. None. Most of her A-level classes had 25 people in them, and were led by teachers who hadn't even got top grades themselves. Andrew got four As. Laura got an A and three Bs.

Who had demonstrated they were smarter? I'd say Laura did – but she was rejected, while Andrew got in. His training – and a lifetime in such surroundings – paid off. Laura was nervous, and her complex thoughts about Nietzsche and Hume and Russell must have appeared less polished. It was Cambridge's loss: the cleverer student got away. This isn't a stray anecdote. For too long, it was the main story. In 2006, for example, the gap between the best private schools and the best grammar schools in exam results was just 1 per cent – but the private schools students were still twice as likely to be admitted.

Here's where we get to the pressure-point. For the past few years, senior figures in Oxford and Cambridge – pressured by a Labour government – have resolved this can't go on. They want to run a university for the best, not a highbrow finishing school. So they have begun to introduce very mild reformist measures. Instead of just looking at the surface of exam and interview performance, they will judge them in the context of the student's life. They'll look at your school's average exam grades, whether your parents went to university, and the area you're from: if you got good grades at a school in Moss Side, you'll be rated higher. This is painted by huffing headmasters at private schools as "positive discrimination". But the choice is not between a system that discriminates and one that doesn't. It's between a blunt, blind admissions system that discriminates in favour of wealthy well-trained interview-machines, and a sophisticated, seeing one that snuffles out the genuinely clever.
Soon the green shoots of these new policies will become clear. Geoff Parks, Cambridge's Director of Admissions, says early indicators show there will be a "significant" increase in pupils from normal backgrounds this year. Expect a firestorm of anger. The right-wing press will rage that "middle-class" children are being "persecuted". Their definition of "middle-class" is increasingly comic: the median wage in Britain is £24,000. Half of us earn more; half of us earn less. Yet they describe as "Middle England" people who spend that entire sum every year on one child's schooling.

Often, the privileged will defend their place merely with a visceral howl of "It's mine!" For example, David Cameron's relative Harry Mount has written an angry article asking, "What's wrong with keeping Oxford within the family?" He admits his success at his interview was "staggeringly unfair" but went on to say the only problem is rich people can't buy preference for their children outright with "donations."

There will be furious predictions that Oxbridge will collapse under a "chav-alanche" of inferior students. Those of us who believe that in Britain you should be able to get to the top if you are smart need to push back hard for these changes to be stepped up. Of course Oxbridge can't get us all the way to genuine meritocracy. For that, the schools system needs to be reworked to be genuinely comprehensive, rather than the parody we have today where they are split between good schools selecting by house-price and sink schools for the rest. But even with the unequal products of that system, Oxbridge can go a lot further.

In the 1970s, when the former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was Chancellor of Oxford University, he was amazed by the changes in the admissions process. "In my day," he said, "all they asked you was where you got your boots made." In the 2040s, we will be equally astonished that Oxbridge used to rely so heavily on interviews that give an unfair advantage to the well-drilled children of the wealthy.

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