Balmy!

Harriet Harman will be instructing the Audit Commission and Ofsted that they will have responsibility to monitor public bodies to see how they are reducing the class divide. All bodies will have a responsibility to consider how they can "reduce socio-economic inequalities in their policies.

This is surely the ultimate in social engineering. Miss Harman, and others in Whitehall, will receive reports, and could direct resources to be allocated according to her preferences.

Having failed to achieve the objective, of greater equality, through all the many ways of government policy, you would hope that the government would have realised the ineffectiveness of trying to impose a solution from the top by fiat, but apparently not.

If greater equality of outcome is desired, the attack should be to do something about the quality of family life, of selection in education in place of wealth (- selection not based on one examination but on results over four years), and the benefits culture. She really ought to ask herself why we are the most class-ridden society in the developed world, despite the large public sector.

As it is, we have yet another half-baked policy, probably to push credentials of a party leadership candidate, imposing still more burdens on overworked leaders and managers. The sooner this ineffective and destructive lot are removed, the better.