Over the past fifteen years (and beyond) Oliver Letwin has been one of the Conservative Party’s most influential figures. With various stints as Shadow Chancellor and Shadow Home Secretary, to his current role as the Chancellor of the Duchy Lancaster where he’s responsible for overseeing the cabinet office, he’s been at the heart of Conservative Party policy.

But before he entered party politics, Letwin was a philosopher. His background in philosophy, in particular in emotion and ethics, was on full display in his Bright Blue keynote speech. Before getting into the nitty-gritty of policy, Letwin focused on defining his terms. 

Letwin made clear he was after “real equality of opportunity”. That means more than just the removal of legal barriers. Laws like the Equality Act prevent firms from overtly discriminating, but as Letwin notes “the appearance of open doors” is not enough. It’s becoming increasingly clear, that there are subtle barriers to employment, that may not even be intentional on the part of the employer. 

Take, for instance the problem of workplace name discrimination, studies have shown that having a white-sounding name on your CV can make you up to 50% more likely to receive a job interview, than having a more ethnic-sounding name. For Letwin, “real equality of opportunity” cannot be achieved unless these subtle barriers are removed. 

Letwin also argued persuasively why our focus should be upon equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. He offered three reasons: that it best incentives productive activity; that it is fair; and most interestingly that it is in the interest of the individuals themselves to be given a fair opportunity rather than be handed an outcome by the state. In what was a common occurrence that night, Letwin cited Justice Secretary Michael Gove, who stressed the importance of giving people the opportunity to “write their own life stories”. As Letwin put it, “part of what it is to write your own life story is to have written it yourself -- not to have sat idly by while a ghost-writer prepares the manuscript for the publisher.”

Moving onto policy, Letwin delivered an incredibly comprehensive overview of the governments social reform programme, listing by my count, 16 different policies. Including a proposal to tackle CV discrimination by making all civil service job applications name-blind. Watch out for more policy ideas to tackle ‘subtle’ discrimination – including racial, gender and sexual discrimination – from Bright Blue’s project on ‘Conservatism and human rights’ over the coming year. 

But the comment that caught the most attention from the press, related to the lack of black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals in senior cabinet positions. Paying tribute to organisations like Operation Black Vote, he told the audience that “politicians need to lead by active example -- such as by bringing more women and more representatives of the various Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities into Parliament”, pointing out that progress on this issue has been “frustratingly slow”.  

The reason getting more BME individuals into parliament is so important is also the reason why it’s so difficult. As Letwin puts it, “people of every kind have to be able to feel that they can reach the top jobs because they can see people reaching the top who came from similar circumstances that they face and that’s the only way you can enable what we are trying to argue for”.

Sam Dumitriu is Communications and Events Officer at Bright Blue