Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con) I beg to move,
That this House has considered social mobility. It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to be able to
raise the important issue of social mobility. I am absolutely
delighted to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and
Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies),
will respond to the debate. This matter has interested and
concerned me for...Request free trial
(Bexleyheath and Crayford)
(Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered social mobility.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson,
and to be able to raise the important issue of social mobility. I
am absolutely delighted to see that the Under-Secretary of State
for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex
(), will respond to the
debate.
This matter has interested and concerned me for many years.
Having been so fortunate as to be a product of social mobility,
as are my family, I am keen to see it advanced. My family
originated in the east end of London, in Bow and Poplar. Through
education, hard work, opportunity, determination and good
fortune, my grandfather, Thomas Evennett, and my father, Norman
Evennett, were able to progress during their lives. I too have
had many opportunities to work in careers that I have loved so
much, including as Member of Parliament for Bexleyheath and
Crayford, and before that, for Erith and Crayford.
Social mobility is about every single person having the
opportunity to succeed. It is the link between our starting point
in life and where we end up. If where we begin strongly
determines where we end up, mobility is low, but if everyone has
a good chance of achieving any outcome, regardless of their
background, mobility is high, and that is what all of us here
want. The Conservative Government are determined to ensure that
work is a route out of poverty and into a future where
individuals can achieve their ambitions, irrespective of their
situation or origin.
Social mobility is one of the key reasons why Britain has been so
successful in channelling the talents of all sections of our
country, to their own benefit and that of the whole nation.
Social mobility is good not just from a moral perspective; it has
a huge impact economically. By ensuring talent is harvested from
across the whole social spectrum, we can boost productivity and
our GDP.
The Social Mobility Commission notes:
“the popular narrative of worsening mobility prospects for young
people in the UK is not supported when we take a careful look at
a range of outcomes across education and employment.”
That is positive news, because although talent in Britain is
spread evenly across the country, regrettably, opportunity is not
always. Every individual should have a fair chance of reaching
their full potential, so we must ensure that everyone has the
opportunity to build a good life for themselves, irrespective of
their background.
In the latest “State of the Nation” report from June 2022, almost
every gap in the intermediate outcomes between young people from
higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds has narrowed in the
past decade. However, there are still disparities, but there has
been progress across all measures. Intermediate outcomes in
education and work have been trending in a positive direction.
Educational attainment gaps between people from higher and lower
socioeconomic backgrounds have narrowed, especially at key stages
2 and 4.
The gaps between those from professional and working-class
backgrounds for both university participation and degree
attainment have also narrowed, although I only have figures from
the Sutton Trust, which are rather out of date now. However,
there is still a long way to go. On early careers, the gap
between people from professional and working-class backgrounds
has decreased for most of the occupational and economic outcomes
since 2014. However, it is noted that the full effects of the
covid-19 pandemic are still unlikely to be shown in any data.
Although positive progress has been made, research undertaken by
Professor Steve Strand from the University of Oxford found that
there are still vast inequalities in educational achievement at
the age of 16. I am particularly concerned about the fact that
British white and British black Caribbean male attainment falls
well below the average for all students of that age, and scores
the lowest across all socioeconomic groups, particularly for the
working class.
The variations in attainment are particularly pronounced in the
lowest socioeconomic groups, with black Caribbean males achieving
an average score of -0.77, and British white males achieving a
score of -0.68, compared with Bangladeshi boys achieving a score
of 0.07 and those in other Asian male groups scoring -0.11. There
are also significant disparities between the attainment of boys
and girls in these groups. White British girls and girls of black
Caribbean origin score significantly higher across the
socioeconomic levels than their male counterparts. Girls from
black Caribbean origins from an average socio-economic group
scored 0.01, whereas boys scored -0.41. British white girls from
the same socioeconomic group scored 0.09, while British white
boys scored -0.22.
This data is concerning as educational achievement has such a
significant impact on socioeconomic attainment in later life. Our
priority must be to create an even playing field, so that
everyone has the opportunity to excel and achieve, wherever their
ambitions take them. Even before the pandemic started in 2020,
there were already many challenges facing our country, but the
past three years have added many global challenges outside of the
Government’s control—not just the devastating pandemic, but the
ongoing war in Europe and the rise in the cost of living. These
have all had an impact on social mobility. That is why it is more
important than ever that the Government’s levelling-up agenda
should remain at the heart of all that we do. The Government have
an important role to play—they can lead—but others need to take
up the issue and give it support, be they businesses,
professions, families or communities.
The covid-19 pandemic was hopefully a once-in-a-generation
crisis. It will have an impact on the world’s social mobility for
years to come. It was entirely out of the Government’s control.
It is important to remember that the historic vaccination
programme enabled us to be one of the first western democracies
to restore people’s freedoms and open our economy. The Government
also delivered more than £400 billion-worth of unprecedented
support during the pandemic. It was one of the most generous
economic support packages anywhere in the world. It supported
more than 14.5 million jobs and provided almost £80 billion in
business grants and loans. However, the covid-19 pandemic has
impacted particularly harshly on young people from poorer
backgrounds. It is likely to have long-term consequences, in
education and work, for that cohort. In the short term, we can
expect there to be an adverse effect on social mobility,
particularly for young people entering the labour market.
It is more important than ever that we provide support that can
lift everyone, irrespective of who they are, where they live and
where they come from. We cannot accept a country where people
have different ladders to climb. People must be encouraged to
engage with education and understand its long-term benefits. The
recovery programmes that have been introduced, such as the
recovery premium and the national tutoring programme, are vital
in helping the most disadvantaged. I also welcome the Lifelong
Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill, which is proceeding
through Parliament. It will enable people to get education and
training throughout their life, so that they can skill and
upskill, from school age up to the age of 60. That is a really
positive movement.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the right hon. Gentleman for what he says. I am very
aware that those with educational attainment can move on to
employment that reflects that. People move from one job to
another, but not every person can achieve educational attainment.
I am not decrying anybody, by the way; it is just a fact of life.
For those who cannot achieve educational attainment, their jobs
may be on a building site or a farm, but we should never decry
them. The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned opportunity three or
four times. Does he agree that we need to make sure that a young
boy or girl who is trying to achieve something moves in the
direction that they need to?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, the whole
thing about the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits)
Bill is that it offers skills, training and opportunities. If
people did not succeed at school, they can come back and get
skills, training or qualifications later. That is a really
positive thing that the Government are doing.
I have worked as a college lecturer, teaching women returners to
the workplace after career breaks, the unemployed and those who
needed additional qualifications to advance in their careers, or
to change career. Unfortunately, too much of the education in
colleges and universities has been for young people only, but I
taught people who are older—those who would benefit from what the
Government are doing with the lifelong loan entitlement. It will
improve access to education and training, and accelerate the
Government’s levelling-up agenda.
Providing people with opportunities to acquire skills will help
them to obtain work, or to advance their careers. That is
particularly important in the technological age we live in, where
the need to learn new skills never stops. All of us are always
learning. Lifelong learning has become a reality, as I am sure
you will agree, Mr Robertson. Education played a vital part in my
life, and I am grateful to teachers, employers and my family for
support and encouragement. We should accentuate the positives and
say thanks to the teachers and lecturers at colleges and
universities, as well as businesses and industries that invest in
their staff and help them to advance in their careers.
I recognise that education alone will not be enough to transform
social mobility; nor are the Government’s actions alone. As we
continue our recovery from covid, the Government are spending
record sums on apprenticeships, which play a key role in boosting
social mobility, improving people’s skills, and increasing
earnings and opportunities.
(Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. He
rightly highlighted the challenges faced in raising educational
attainment for white working-class boys and Caribbean boys. Under
the coalition Government, many of the initiatives that he
outlined were started, and they are beginning to bear fruit.
There was also a Cabinet Sub-Committee, chaired by Deputy Prime
Minister , focusing on social mobility and
how we could target groups who had fallen behind. Would my right
hon. Friend recommend that to the Minister as something that
could be taken forward? If we want to get real impetus behind
improving social mobility, there needs to be much more focus
centrally, and a Cabinet Sub-Committee is a good way of doing
that.
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which I know the Minister
will have noted. This focus is so important. We had it, but we
have slightly stalled, which is why I sought this debate.
We need to see even more young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds accessing higher and degree level apprenticeships,
and to ensure that all young people have an understanding of the
many and varied options available to them. Careers advice in
schools, colleges and universities is vital to let individuals
know what is out there and what their potential could lead them
to. Additional funding is being provided to employers and
training providers who take on apprentices aged 16 to 18, and
apprentices aged 19 to 24 who have an education, health and care
plan or have been in care. This targeted support incentivises
employers to provide high-quality apprenticeships across all
sections in disadvantaged areas. However, according to the latest
figures, the share of apprenticeships in the most deprived areas
has fallen from 26% in 2015 to 20% in 2020. That is why it is
vital that everyone—in our constituencies, across Government and
so forth—publicises the excellent opportunities that are
available.
I have long advocated for more collaboration between businesses
and education. Businesses should look to partner schools or
colleges in their local area to provide more careers advice, work
experience and support to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
This would improve social mobility and help to ensure that pupils
obtain the skills necessary to succeed in the world of work. All
children must be nurtured, valued, enthused and inspired by their
schools, and although all children should study the basic
curriculum, there should be the opportunity to have a curriculum
with more relevance to their future life chances; there needs to
be more focus on career opportunities, and it is important that
students are shown the full range of opportunities that they may
be able to pursue. Successive Governments have tried to improve
the careers advice on offer, but unfortunately it still varies
widely across the country, which is why the involvement of
businesses is vital, as is the provision of advice and role
models. Role models are so good to give people an idea of what
they could become via training, skills and education.
A particular campaign that I have been very supportive of and
promoted is the Social Mobility Pledge, which was founded by my
friend, former parliamentary colleague and former Education
Secretary, the right hon. , alongside entrepreneur
David Harrison, who are both passionate about improving
opportunities for all. Some 700 organisations have made the
social mobility pledge, with 5 million employees and 2 million
students covered by it globally. It encourages organisations to
be a force for good by putting social mobility at the heart of
their purpose. The pledge recognises that it is more important
than ever for organisations to take steps to boost opportunity
and social mobility, as we face the challenges of a growing
opportunity gap post covid.
We all want Britain to be a country where all can get on in life,
regardless of our background. Talent is spread across our
country, and businesses, with the prosperity and careers they
create for people, are key to improving social mobility locally
and nationally. There are three parts to the pledge. The first is
getting businesses to partner directly with schools or
colleges
“to provide coaching through quality careers advice, enrichment
experience and mentoring to people from disadvantaged backgrounds
or circumstances.”
The second is access:
“providing structured work, experience and apprenticeship
opportunities to people from disadvantaged backgrounds”.
The third is the adoption of more
“open employee recruitment practices which promote a level
playing field for people from disadvantaged backgrounds or
circumstances”,
with things like “name blind” and contextual recruitment.
Businesses that are prepared to take those simple steps show
their commitment to levelling the playing field of opportunity
for everyone.
I was delighted that the Chancellor’s Budget last week recognised
the need for further investment in removing barriers to work—in
particular, by investing £485 million in support for unemployed
people and those on universal credit working part-time. Assigning
a work coach to those people will support them in obtaining
full-time work. Supporting people into work is important, but we
should also strive to support people into higher-paying jobs, as
that is critical for social mobility. The Government’s job
support initiative provides more than 120,000 low-income workers
with tailored support and guidance so they can earn more and
progress their careers. The Government’s various skills
initiatives provide excellent opportunities to gain key skills
such as numeracy and digital, but it is more important than
ever—essential, in fact—that everyone is encouraged to take up
those opportunities.
Our defining challenge in Britain is to level up opportunity and
make sure everyone gets the chance to go as far as their talents
or ambitions take them. Ultimately, it is about delivering
generational change. That means looking right across people’s
lives from childhood to adulthood. We cannot afford to leave any
section of our population behind; otherwise, there will be
discontent and disillusionment, which is terrible for individuals
and frankly very bad for our nation. Aspiration, opportunity and
achievement are the goals that we should be aiming for. In so
many fields, we have entrepreneurs with business success,
scientists, lawyers, clinicians—high achievers, all of whom need
to be role models. The Government have a mission, but employers
need to raise their own game and rise to the challenge. Britain
remains a great country, but with a more skilled, enthused and
aspirational workforce that is socially mobile, I believe we can
be an even better one.
Several hon. Members rose—
(in the Chair)
Order. A number of Members are trying to get in. If they can
limit themselves to roughly five minutes or so each, we should be
able to manage that.
4.46pm
(Hemsworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
It was interesting to listen to the speech of the right hon.
Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford ( ). He is right to emphasise
social mobility, and I was very interested to hear him describe
his background.
It is probably worth referring to my background. I was more or
less told to leave school when I was 15. I left with no
meaningful qualifications and I went to work as a manual worker
in the building industry. I was encouraged by my grandfather to
try to understand why the system had failed me or why I had
failed the system. I became very curious about it, and eventually
I went to a further education college. The right hon. Gentleman
said he had been a college teacher, so no doubt he helped many
people in my position. I eventually finished up at
university.
My first reflection is this: the stepping stones that were
available to me are no longer available to the same extent to the
current generation. Further education has been cut to the bone
and is simply not available at the scale that it was when I was
younger, when I basically left school in some disgrace. The
university system is now really a commodified form of education.
I voted against the original idea to charge student fees—it was a
mistake. I did it because I was thinking about people from my
background. My grandad said to me, “The system doesn’t work for
people like us.” That is a profound thing to have said, and I
have spent almost all my life trying to understand what it is
about “people like us” and why the system is not working properly
for them.
The right hon. Gentleman has an optimistic view of social
mobility in our society, perhaps because his constituency is the
51st most socially mobile in the whole country. There are 533
constituencies in England, and mine is the 529th most socially
mobile, so he and I inhabit almost two different worlds. He is
right to be passionate about this subject, but the truth of the
matter is that the Conservative idea that there is real social
mobility available for all who are able to make use of it is
simply an ideological myth designed to gloss over the fact that
our social structures are ossified and it is almost impossible to
break though.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Sutton Trust. The trust
identified, out of the 60-odd million of us in this country,
6,000 people who run it; and two fifths of them went to public
school, which is five times as many as average. I accept the
right hon. Member did not go to public school; I do not know why
I am looking at him—I will draw my attention elsewhere. The
people who run this country, including this Parliament, tend to
come from very privileged backgrounds. Not so many years ago,
there were 100 manual workers in Parliament; now there are only
seven of us left. There are 200 people with a business background
in the House of Commons. If we look at almost every power
structure in our society, the same thing applies—other than in
professional sports, where more people from working-class
backgrounds have access.
I will cut to the chase. There are 440,000 children living in
poverty, despite that fact that their parents are working
full-time, and yet Government Members and Ministers continually
tell us that work is the way to opportunity in life. I believe in
work. I am a member of a party called Labour; the Labour party is
about work. We believe in work and want people to be at work. But
do not tell me or my constituents that work is a route out of
poverty. It is a route into poverty as much as any other system
in our country.
In my constituency, there has been a 50% increase in the number
of children in poverty since 2015. That is in one constituency.
My constituency is also in the lowest 20% for young people’s
educational attainment. Given the low levels of social mobility,
and the levels of poverty and education in my constituency, it is
impossible to imagine, how—without dramatic social and economic
change—a child born there today can expect to do anything other
than die younger than normal and in poverty. The whole idea of
social mobility is a myth, unless it is combined with massive
structural and transformative change. With that, I will take the
hint that I have had my five minutes.
4.52pm
(Wantage) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath
and Crayford ( ) on securing the debate. I
have heard him talk many times about how important social
mobility is to him, and we have had conversations about it. He is
right that we have slightly lost focus on the issue in recent
years.
Social mobility has been very important to my own personal and
professional life. I ran three charities for disadvantaged young
people, the last of which was called the Social Mobility
Foundation. I was on the original Social Mobility and Child
Poverty Commission, when was the chair. I chair the
social mobility all-party parliamentary group. The two words
“social mobility” have been very important in both my personal
and professional life.
If there is one key point in what I will say, it is that it is
everybody’s responsibility to make social mobility happen. On the
commission, we used to say that we can get into a situation where
employers blame universities, which blame schools, which blame
families—and everybody blames the Government—and that, actually,
if at each stage of people’s life cycles things were done
slightly differently, obstacles that are in the way of social
mobility would be removed.
Starting with the early years is very important, but it should
not be an obsession. It does not necessarily provide what
Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone calls the escape
velocity that will take someone through the rest of their
life—even though we might hope it does. Some academics would say
that about 80% of our outcomes are about what happens in the home
rather than in school. We focus on school in this place. That is
why things like family hubs are so important; every parent wants
to be able to do the right thing, but they do not necessarily get
the right advice and guidance about what to do. Being
school-ready at age five is so important to how children then
access school as they move through their lives. That is one big
area that is not within the Government’s control, but it is
important that we encourage the right things.
Then there is school. The Prime Minister said that education is
the closest thing to a silver bullet that we have for social
mobility.
Dr Poulter
Before my hon. Friend moves on to school-age children, there are
things the Government can do to support disadvantaged and
vulnerable children at an early age to improve not only
educational attainment, but many aspects of their lives. We can
look at longitudinal studies of schemes like the Family Nurse
Partnership, which targets vulnerable and poorer families,
provides targeted support for new mums and dads, and helps
children be school-ready. Will he briefly comment on that,
because that is something the Government could put money
towards?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to talk more about
this because too often in politics people on the left fear they
will demonise parents and on the right they fear they will appear
to be the nanny state if they talk about it, but politicians and
commentators who say those things are doing exactly the right
things for their children. He is absolutely right about the
Family Nurse Partnership and a whole range of other things,
including family hubs.
The schools system is the easiest lever for politicians to pull,
and we have seen huge increases in attainment through academies,
free schools and various other initiatives. We have seen London
state schools go from being the worst to the best, but we still
have parts of the country where the standard of education is not
good enough. We have a gender gap in education where girls do
better than boys, and an ethnicity gap where certain ethnic
groups do better than others, but the biggest gap in education is
between children who have free school meals and those who do not.
Although we have been making progress—albeit slow—covid has made
that situation a lot worse, and has destroyed a lot of the
progress we have made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for
Bexleyheath and Crayford says, the national tutoring programme is
important, but we have to do more to focus on that.
Let me quickly canter through some other areas. This is about
further education colleges and ensuring that the courses they
provide will help people in the employment market, which is what
we were trying to get to with the Skills and Post-16 Education
Act 2022. When it comes to universities, the success they often
trumpet about the percentage of state school students they have
masks the fact that a huge proportion of them went to selective
state schools—grammar schools—and that the proportion of
comprehensive school entry pupils is still low. There is more for
them to do, particularly at the most elite universities.
Finally, on professions, Members will have heard me say
previously that someone is 24 times more likely to become a
doctor if their parent is a doctor; only 6% of doctors are from a
working-class background. Again, that is not in the Government’s
control. Employers have to do something about that. Some people
will say that social mobility is not about people leaving their
home area, going to a Russell Group university and getting a
middle-class job, but show me someone who says that, and nine
times out of 10 they will have done exactly that in their own
life. That does not invalidate the point—we need to have both,
and to move jobs and investment to those areas—but do not tell me
that we should not be trying to get more people into those
universities and professions, because they are controlling the
country. If we are to get to a position where talent and
opportunity is everywhere, everybody has to play their part.
(in the Chair)
I have to ask Members to please stick to four minutes now.
4.57pm
(Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford
( ) on securing and leading
this important debate. A gap between aspiration and opportunity
exists in some parts of the country, and that should not be the
case. I am in a similar position to my hon. Friend the Member for
Hemsworth (); if we look at the list of constituencies and the
ranking of social mobility, Barnsley East is 430 out of 533
constituencies in England. That is different from constituencies
of—not exclusively, but generally—Conservative MPs.
Former coalfields like Barnsley East tend to have fewer good
jobs, which obviously has a knock-on effect on the number of
schools and transport infrastructure in the area. Among other
factors, this has led to a significant geographical divide
between the north and the south. For example, life expectancy in
Barnsley for both men and women is approximately two years less
than the national average and five years less than more affluent
areas of Surrey. More than 6,300 children across Barnsley East
alone—that is just my constituency, not the borough of
Barnsley—live in child poverty. A third of Barnsley residents now
live in fuel poverty, and the Office for National Statistics
found that 12.4% of those eligible to work in Barnsley do not
have any qualifications. That is in stark contrast with London,
where the number of people with no qualifications sits at just
6.6%.
All these factors obviously have an impact on children’s and
young people’s life chances. Accessible vocational education is
an important part of overcoming disadvantage, giving young people
the tools and employment experience to get on in life. My
constituency of Barnsley East does not have a sixth form college,
so when students finish their GCSEs at one of the secondary
schools, they have to travel into the town centre and go to
Barnsley College. That is not to take away from the fantastic
work that the college does; it is an excellent college and it
really supports people. I know from being a teacher that for some
children and young people, not having to take that step of
leaving their supportive school environment would encourage them
to stay on and think about further education.
We need long-term, sustained investment in our schools.
Investment has been cut over the last decade. We also need
investment in industry so that young people and children have as
much chance to succeed as they would in other parts of the
country. We need to think about young people’s experience at
school. As a former teacher, I have seen at first hand that if
they turn up to school hungry, it affects their ability to learn
and to do well.
We must also think about young people’s access to extracurricular
and cultural activities. Parents may be doing the best they can,
but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth said, being in
work does not necessarily mean they are not in poverty. A good
example of encouraging kids to do a cultural activity is the
fantastic, world-class Barnsley Youth Choir, which provides
choral training regardless of financial or social background. It
is an amazing programme that has done so much for Barnsley, and I
am pleased to support it.
My final point on education relates to the point that the
previous speaker, the hon. Member for Wantage (), made about the impact of
covid. There was a huge disparity between the learning
experiences of working-class kids and middle-class kids during
the pandemic. Using predicted grades for people’s A-level results
also had a hugely disproportionate effect on areas such as
Barnsley, and that will have a huge impact going forward.
Social mobility is really about this generation doing better than
the generation before, and we are falling behind on that. The
Government can, and should, do better to support working-class
communities such as Barnsley, by investing in both people and
local economies. I am sure that the Labour spokesperson, my hon.
Friend the Member for Wirral South (), will touch on some of
this, but a future Labour Government have pledged to do just
that.
We will invest in the skills of our workforce, including a shift
of resources to local communities to help people back into work.
We will help more people into high-skilled and better-paid jobs,
and implement a new taskforce—Skills England—to link local people
with local businesses to grow skills and the economy across the
whole country. It is about ensuring that kids have the best
education, and that they can get qualifications and good jobs.
Where someone is born should not limit their opportunities or
their chances. It currently does, and that must change.
5.02pm
(Darlington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath
and Crayford ( ) on securing this important
debate, and I am delighted to see the Minister for Social
Mobility, Youth and Progression responding to it.
Levelling up is not just about dishing out money to parts of the
north that have been ignored by Governments of all colours.
Righting that wrong is part of my motivation for being here, and
it is about delivering on the core missions of the levelling-up
agenda. Social mobility goes to the heart of those missions,
particularly education and skills. We all know that there are
only two real- terms solutions to solving poverty—work and
education. Providing opportunity, aspiration and inspiration to
the next generation is critical to delivering social mobility. We
all have a part to play in that.
For the record, Darlington is ranked 120 out of 533 English
constituencies on the social mobility index, so Conservative
Members are representing every type of constituency out there.
There is already a vast swathe of new opportunities for local
people in Darlington, which will enable them to fully reach their
potential and find good, well-paid and secure employment into the
future. Just this weekend, the brand new engineering block, the
Ingenium Centre, opened at Darlington College. The centre has
been delivered with £2.96 million from the towns fund, and it
will house the college’s T-level students.
I commend the Government for introducing T-levels, and for
providing an innovative educational route for people to gain the
skills they need to prosper and fully meet their potential. I
simply do not recognise the picture painted by the hon. Member
for Hemsworth ().
Literacy and reading is a great ladder for opportunity, and we
know that wider reading broadens aspirations. I take this
opportunity to highlight and pay tribute to Skerne Park Academy
and its reading lobster scheme, which was introduced after the
children said they did not have someone to read aloud to at home.
They now each have their own reading lobster, a buddy for life to
listen to their stories. The scheme is proving hugely successful
and is promoting a lifelong love of reading in these children.
Indeed, Seb, my own lobster, has met Mr Speaker, the Prime
Minister and the Chancellor. The scheme is going down very well
in Skerne Park in Darlington. We know that children who read for
pleasure go further in life, and I ask the Minister what the
Government are doing to ensure that we encourage wider
reading.
This debate seemed a perfect opportunity to highlight the work of
the Purpose Coalition and the Social Mobility Pledge, but my
right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford has
already done that, so I want to put on record my thanks to and David Harrison for
their incredible work on the Social Mobility Pledge. Through the
Harrison Foundation, which David heads up, the Social Mobility
Pledge has contributed over £50,000 to First Stop Darlington,
which is helping people get on in life.
In conclusion, the investment that Darlington has received from
the Government has helped to galvanise organisations that work
with local people to ensure their true potential is not wasted.
But we can go further, and I urge the Minister to do so. Many of
us in this place can be examples to our communities of what can
be achieved. I am thinking in particular about those of us who
went to state schools and were the first in our families to go to
university, or indeed did not go at all.
5.06pm
(Ellesmere Port and Neston)
(Lab)
Social mobility ought to concern us all. I am not comfortable
living in a country where the chances of success are heavily
influenced by where someone is born and who they are to. The
Sutton Trust’s report “Elites in the UK: Pulling Away?” found
that one in five men in professional occupations who were born
between 1955 and 1961 became socially mobile, but the figure
drops to one in eight for those born between 1975 and 1981. In
other words, as generations go by, we are becoming a less mobile
nation.
When I was chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social
mobility, we did a report on access to professions, including
medicine, law, politics, media and art. Those are the areas where
the lack of opportunity is most prevalent. Three quarters of
senior judges, more than half the top 100 news journalists, more
than half the Cabinet and two thirds of British Oscar winners are
privately educated. We have already heard the statistic that
someone is 24 times more likely to be in medicine if their
parents are already in it.
Our report is six years old but just as relevant today. I would
really like to see some of the practical recommendations in it
implemented, such as a ban on unpaid internships, which really
take the ladder away from many who are trying to get on the first
rung. Exploitation is taking place at entry level.
Drama is one area where opportunities are limited. I should point
out, for the record, that my son is an aspiring actor and uses
some of the services I am about to mention. I mention them
because they are a new way of exploiting young people’s
ambitions. Most acting jobs now are hidden behind paywalls,
costing anywhere from £15 and £19 a month to access. What kind of
world do we live in where someone has to pay a subscription just
to see whether there are any jobs they might want to apply
for?
There are three companies that seem to operate in this way:
Spotlight, Mandy and StarNow, which I see regularly advertising
on social media. I say three companies advisedly, because
Backstage and StarNow seem to have almost identical websites, and
Mandy and StarNow have the same registered office and similar
directors. Perhaps I am missing something about why I need to
have three separate subscriptions. In their defence, they
say:
“Having memberships to the multiple platforms will give you
access to the most job opportunities and increase your visibility
to casting”.
That sounds reasonable enough, but I suggest it would also be
reasonable to put all the jobs on one site and not charge at all.
We can debate the morality of this business model another time,
but I wonder whether the Minister thinks it is right for a
profession that is notoriously difficult to access to be
exploiting people and charging them just to look at what jobs are
available.
I conclude by asking the Minister another question about where
social mobility lies in the Government’s list of priorities. As
we have heard, if social mobility is to be tackled properly, we
need to tackle more than just access to work. It is about tax,
welfare, housing, transport and health. At the very least, it
should not be the remit of just one Minister in one Department;
it should be a central mission across all Departments. If the
Government are serious about tackling injustice and widening
opportunity, it must be driven from the very top.
5.09pm
(Motherwell and Wishaw)
(SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford
( ), but I also want to
chastise him because he has taken some of my best lines.
I, too, am a product of social mobility. My father was a
co-operative milkman and my mother was a cleaner. They both left
school at 14, but they were determined to give me the chances
that they never had. I was the first in my entire family to go to
university in the days when many folk considered educating girls
to be just a waste of time—she would only get married and have
weans. I did both, and now I am here.
I also taught in further education. I know that times have
changed, but social mobility is a real issue. Those in poverty
cannot be socially mobile. Those who are hungry cannot learn.
When fees are a barrier, many cannot access higher education.
That is why children in Scotland are lucky. The Scottish
Government take their duties to the next generation seriously,
and they have introduced many measures to tackle child poverty.
The latest iteration is “Best Start, Bright Futures”, which looks
at long-term parental employment support, increased social
security and measures to reduce household costs. The recent
Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of Scottish tax and benefit
reform found that the lowest-income families in Scotland are
significantly better off as a result of the Scottish Government’s
tax regime.
Among the poorest 30% of households, those with children will see
their incomes boosted by a sizeable £2,000 a year on average,
driven by higher benefits for families with children. Perhaps the
Minister would consider that in relation to the UK. The Scottish
child payment has recently been increased immensely. It is now up
to £25 a week—the Scottish Government are providing an extra £2.6
million this year—and it is being extended to children up to the
age of 16.
Other small independent countries do much better on social
mobility. I am thinking of Nordic countries, such as Denmark.
According to OECD figures, it takes two generations to increase
social mobility in Denmark, but it takes five generations in the
United Kingdom. We must look at that.
I do not want to, and cannot, mention everyone, but the hon.
Member for Hemsworth () caught my attention when he talked about
Conservative Members saying that the only way out of poverty is
work. That is not the case for those on a zero-hours contract and
minimum wage. The living wage, as it is described by the Tory
Government, is not enough to live on. That is why many working
parents are still getting universal credit. There is something
wrong with a system where both parents are working and children,
who are our future, will never be able to be socially mobile.
They will not know how, because they are being held back by
poverty. Will the Minister also look at introducing a minimum
support payment for the Child Maintenance Service if parents
refuse to pay? I have already spoken to her about this.
Social mobility is important. Social mobility actually works.
Social mobility means that we will prosper, right across the UK.
Countries, such as Norway, which give their citizens high social
benefits, are not poor countries. They make people’s lives better
and therefore increase social mobility. I will sit down now,
because I am really interested in what the Minister and the
Opposition have to say.
(in the Chair)
I call , who also has five
minutes.
5.14pm
(Wirral South) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Robertson. I will try to be
swift.
I obviously thank the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and
Crayford ( ) for securing this timely
debate, and I thank all the Members who have spoken. The right
hon. Member began by mentioning the 2022 report of the Social
Mobility Commission. However, since its publication the chair of
the commission has given up her role and it is unclear what the
future holds.
I am here on behalf of the shadow Department for Work and
Pensions team, and the Minister is here representing DWP.
Responsibility for social mobility has been passed from Education
to Equalities and now to DWP. Over the past couple of years, that
has suggested that it is an unloved policy area for which nobody
really wants to take responsibility.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
()
I really wanted it!
I am sure the Minister did. But what exactly is going on? Part 1
of the Equalities Act 2010, which Parliament passed all those
years ago, set out a public sector duty regarding socioeconomic
inequalities that would have tackled, in a cross-cutting way, as
ably described by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port
and Neston (), all the issues that
Members have mentioned today. That is its objective. Amazingly,
the Conservative-Lib Dem Government and subsequent Conservative
Governments have never brought that duty into force. We are left
asking why.
However, as we are here with a DWP Minister and her shadow, I
will just raise some points about the Department’s own policy
areas. If it had that overarching duty to tackle socioeconomic
inequality, it might not have adopted, as it has done for many
years now, the policy of any job, better job, career. That policy
has shaped the Department’s approach and has resulted in people
being told to get any job, as if that was a route up or a route
out of poverty. As we have heard from Member after Member today,
it is simply no longer the case that work, by definition,
provides a route out of poverty. It is also true, and the
Government themselves know this from their own pay progression
report, that getting any job is not a route to better pay.
We need new principles and new policies, not least because of the
geographical impact of this issue. We know from the House of
Commons Library’s analysis of the Social Mobility Commission’s
previous rankings that 77% of constituencies in London are in the
top 20% of social mobility constituencies by metric, whereas the
corresponding figure for the west midlands falls to 14%, for the
east midlands 9%, for the north-west 8%, for Yorkshire and the
Humber 7%, and for the south-west just 2%. Of the top-ranking
areas for social mobility, 77% are London constituencies and just
2% are in the south-west. Geography is at the heart of this.
Exactly what steps is DWP going to take to clarify the role of
the Social Mobility Commission? What data will be made available
to this House and when on the current state of social mobility in
this country? Precisely what targets are the Government now
setting? What is the future for the commission’s metrics—it seems
to have veered between different ones—and its report? And what
action will DWP take immediately to stop forcing people to take
jobs that, as several Members have said, are likely to make them
struggle with social mobility and not achieve their
ambitions?
Social mobility cannot just be a talking point for us
politicians; it has to be about genuine hard work to shift the
opportunities in our countries. I am afraid that the Tories and
the Lib Dems saw this as a way out in 2011: they wanted to end
the child poverty goal and to put something fluffy about social
mobility in its place. But passing a non-specific goal from
Department to Department is kidology—it will never work. We need
a real effort for change. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere
Port and Neston has already said how the Labour party will do
that. The first thing that we will do is to enact part 1 of the
Equalities Act 2010 and take real action against class
discrimination and put in place policies to bring it to an
end.
5.19pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
()
I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for
Bexleyheath and Crayford ( ) on securing this important
debate and on his excellent, thoughtful and wide-ranging speech
on social mobility. It has also been a pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I thank all Members who have
contributed to this excellent debate.
I reassure Members of all parties that as the Minister for Social
Mobility, Youth and Progression in the Department for Work and
Pensions, this is a topic that I am particularly passionate
about. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Central
Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), I am absolutely committed
to working across Government and keeping a focus on this issue. I
absolutely agree with the point about role models: you simply
can’t be it if you can’t see it.
On Single Parents’ Day, and as a single mum, it is an honour and
still a surprise to serve in this House. I was the first uni
student in my family, with many of my relatives still thriving in
trades as manual workers with a farming background. My father
left school at 14 with no qualifications and a substantial
dyslexia challenge, so our family is absolutely a product of
social mobility. I understand the strong views expressed by the
hon. Member for Hemsworth (). I take a different view, but I am very proud and
pleased that we all share our own experiences in this House, and
how we learn from our experiences helps with the role model
piece.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and
Crayford and many colleagues about the commitments that we make
in this House by continuing through, and this is a great
opportunity to move the levelling-up conversation into the social
mobility conversation. Social mobility is absolutely about every
single person having the chance and opportunity to succeed, no
matter their background or postcode.
The Minister may not be aware that Darlington is home to one of
the largest settled Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the
country. I am particularly keen to hear her views—if not today,
by following up in writing—on what the Government are doing
specifically in respect of them.
The support for all groups, no matter their background or where
they are, is exemplified by hon. Friend pointing out that
particular group. I am happy to come forward with further
information on that, including cross-Government work.
The Government remain committed to all aspects of life, from
education to work and later life, and to having a comprehensive
suite of measures in place to achieve social mobility. The
challenges laid down today are very welcome, because we have
heard about different experiences in the different corners of
Britain. Yesterday I visited Sandwell, West Bromwich,
Wolverhampton and central Birmingham to discuss how our DWP
support, youth offer and work with the third sector and local
partnerships is making a difference in our communities.
I do not agree with the hon. Member for Wirral South () on the ABC—any job, better
job, career—approach. Throughout the engagement that I had
yesterday, it was consistently said to me that the skills,
confidence and network that that gives people are transformative.
As we have all spoken about today, you have to start
somewhere.
It is great to hear the Minister’s contribution, and I know she
cares deeply about this issue. If she has evidence of the
efficacy of that policy approach, will she place it in the
Library of the House of Commons?
We are doing some work on the impact of the kickstart scheme and
how getting a job and progressing is leading young people to stay
in work. There will be further information coming, and I will
always share that with the hon. Lady.
In my conversations yesterday, I heard how adverse childhood
experiences such as bereavement, poor attainment at school and
other issues have impacted on young people’s confidence and
opportunities, and on their experiences in adulthood. It
demonstrates the critical point made in the Chamber this
afternoon about the importance of getting education right and,
above all, getting the Government’s lifetime skills guarantee
right. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and
Crayford rightly said, education and skills have a massive
impact. I absolutely agree that local colleges are among the most
socially mobile and able connectors in terms of what they
achieve, and I applaud the work that goes on in colleges.
Spreading opportunity for every child and young person is a top
priority, because their talent should contribute to where they
end up.
I am concerned by the point made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere
Port and Neston () about job opportunities
being hidden behind paywalls. As the former Employment Minister,
and as the Minister for Youth, I worry about those opportunities.
I thank him for raising that point. I ask those sectors that
often approach the Government about being more socially mobile
and more open to look at themselves. This is not a
finger-pointing exercise, but those that continue to recruit in
the same way often end up with the same people around the table.
If that is excluding people, let us look at those recruitment
basics.
The Government are investing in 55 education investment areas
where outcomes in literacy and numeracy are the poorest,
including £86 million in trust capacity funding to support and
expand areas of improvement. That will help my hon. Friend the
Member for Darlington () in terms of his reading ask.
I will meet my parliamentary neighbour, the Minister for
Children, Families and Wellbeing, my hon. Friend the Member for
East Surrey (), shortly and will raise
the issue of reading confidence. I was delighted to hear my hon.
Friend the Member for Darlington use the O-word—opportunities. We
are absolutely trying to spread opportunities.
The Department for Education is delivering a clearer skills
system that is employer focused, high quality and fit for the
future, which is what my right hon. Friend the Member for
Bexleyheath and Crayford, who set up the debate so well, asked
for. If only we had had time for a longer debate. We should get
this subject into the main Chamber and spend more time on it. I
would be very happy to respond to it—that is another commitment
from me today.
The Social Mobility Commission has said that apprenticeships are
among the best mechanisms to help employers build that diverse,
talented, wide-ranging workforce, as well as to tackle the skills
shortage. Many apprentices earn more than graduates five years
after completion. Average graduate earnings five years after
graduation are £28,200, compared with £30,900 for level 4
apprentices five years after completion. That is a lesson to us
all to promote filling the skills gaps with apprenticeships.
DWP has progression leads in our jobcentres to help people. I
recognise that some people work all the hours God sends but still
find it difficult to make ends meet. Our progression leads work
with our claimants, partner organisations, local authorities,
local employers and small and medium-sized enterprises, to make
sure that people are able to progress in work.
I had a very engaging meeting with leading employers during the
week of International Women’s Day, to talk about the barriers and
to focus on interventions. I will meet the Social Mobility Pledge
team, including our former parliamentary colleague, , to discuss her mission.
She is doing a brilliant job. DWP also has the social mobility
commitment, pledge and consortium, of which 60 employers are a
part.
It has been such a pleasure to respond to today’s debate, because
this week is the DWP’s inaugural social mobility week—a week of
action and engagement in our Department, with colleagues across
the country working out how to tackle any barriers and to focus
on social mobility. That includes being a national employer and
giving our customers aspirations and goals. We are looking at
things such as caring responsibilities, and I will host a session
on Thursday. We are also looking at subjects such as accent bias
and recruitment bias. I hope that reassures the hon. Member for
Wirral South.
Throughout the debate, we have seen that social mobility is a key
priority and I hope I have shown my passion for it. We will break
down the barriers. No matter what someone’s background is, we can
cater for every single circumstance. Everybody, like us, should
have the opportunities to succeed.
5.29pm
I thank the Minister for her response and thank everyone who has
participated. We should be working together as much as we can. I
do not agree with the hon. Member for Hemsworth (), but I hope we can have a chat over a cup of
tea.
This is a very important issue. We have had a very constructive
debate. We have lots of ideas and we want to make progress. Those
of us who come from very ordinary backgrounds want other people
to be able to do the same and make something of their lives—I
think we can all agree on that. This is a very important issue. I
do not want to make it party political, because I think it is
much bigger than that. There should be a national approach to get
the very best for all of our people, so that they can progress to
what they want to and really can be.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered social mobility.
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