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SCOTLAND is not a "classless society" as social background and family income still determine the prospects of future generations, according to Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy.

Mr Murphy will use a speech to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) this week to start an "uncomfortable conversation" about class and its continuing influence on ambition, income and inequality in Scotland.

The "classless society" is a term commonly associated with the Conservative Party, specifically former prime minister John Major who used the term to describe Britain in the early 1990s.

But Mr Murphy insists those who say Britain is a classless society are "denying the truth to say that income and class don't matter".

Speaking ahead of his address to the SCVO's Glasgow Gathering event, Mr Murphy said: "The degree of inequality that Scotland suffers from isn't just wrong, it is inefficient for our economy.

"When such a big determinant of your outcome is the history of your family tree, clearly things have to change.

"Politics can't just continue to ignore it.

"I know that for some politicians class is an uncomfortable conversation and I have never understood why.

"I know that sometimes over the last 30 years there has been a sense of: let's not talk about class because we are in a 'classless society'.

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"But the problems are so deep for a minority of people in our country it is denying the obvious, it is denying the truth, to say that income and class don't matter.

"They do, and that is reflected on much of what we do in our policy on early intervention and on school policy in particular, and on jobs, health and education, and about giving everyone what most of take for granted, which is a first chance at life.

"A lot of folk I am meeting in this job just don't get a first chance in life.

"For some reason this has made some folk get involved in a debate about my politics being driven by a sense of working class parents having to bring up middle-class kids.

"That's smack, bang, in the middle of the politics of aspiration.

"I am very comfortable with it, it is instinctively what I believe in, it's what drives a lot of my politics and my public policy as first minister."

He added: "At this election, with a cross in a box Scots can save the poorest families in Scotland £3,000 over the next parliament, because that is the average cost of the bedroom tax for those who are affected by it in Scotland.

"The average annual reduction is £600."