Private education came under forceful attack at the UK Labour party conference last week. Delegates passed a motion with policy options ranging from much heavier taxation to outright abolition and expropriation .

But parents surely have a right to spend their money on educating their children. And behind the network of privilege linking our prominent public schools and Oxford and Cambridge, there is a much more diverse independent sector including many local schools with distinctive missions.

The privilege which rankles most is the fast track from public schools to the UK’s most selective universities. But they are at last making serious progress in broadening access. King’s College, London, where I am a visiting professor, recruits to its medical school students from poorer parts of London who have secured well below the classic three As at A-level. We then provide an extra year of education to get them up to the required standard. They go on to do almost as well as the students with much higher grades. Recent research from the Higher Education Policy Institute showed that the majority of students support these moves.