Julian Le Grand: Choice is particularly popular among the less well off

While "the middle classes have a way of manipulating non-choice situations", it is the less well off who particularly value the element of choice which Labour have attempted to offer in the public sector, says Julian Le Grand, Professor of Social Policy at LSE and former senior policy advisor to Tony Blair. Mr Le Grand discusses the implications of the current lack of confidence in the financial markets on the free market approach to public sector reform and talks about his ideas for overhauling government spending on education by offering schools a greater budget to educate children from less affluent backgrounds.

Big Ideas is a series of films featuring leading academics from the London School of Economics and Political Science presenting novel and often bold solutions to some of the problems facing British society today. The series has been made specially for Independent.co.uk by Ember Regis in conjunction with LSE.