Social Mobility

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw that this debate was down in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, I immediately thought, “Yes, I’m going to say something about that”—and then I thought, “I have a lot to say about that, on numerous subjects”. It was restrained of the noble Lord in his 15-odd minutes to limit himself to a number of subjects, because everything affects social mobility. However, I will try to exercise a little restraint and will talk about only two areas. One is how we help those in the education system—I take on board the stricture of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on this. The first thing you should say is that your parents are your key educators, and doing anything that improves the status your parents give you is a difficult task. So we are setting ourselves a little mountain to climb at the beginning.

Also, your parents will usually tell you to be like them. I am afraid that when people tell you to be like them, it brings in a whole series of straitjackets. It is also worth reminding ourselves that occasionally people who are in one of the professions do not want their children to do anything else. So if you happen to be a potentially excellent cabinetmaker or artist, you may be restrained from doing that. But I agree that that is a smaller problem than many others. If there is this pressure on you to attain and jump over certain hurdles, usually educational ones which allow you to access the better opportunities and things, are we identifying properly all the things that might slow you down?

I hope that the Minister will not be terribly surprised—indeed, I hope that his office passed on my advance warning on this subject—that I think that when it comes to special educational needs or the “hidden disabilities”, as I like to call them, which you have to look for and know what you are looking for, we are not at present equipping our teachers and educators throughout the education system to identify these people, who have different learning patterns. Let us face it: this subject has been given a little frisson by the idea that grammar schools will come back in and make everybody more socially mobile.

The Minister made it slightly more difficult for me to have a go at him after I asked him a question about the age of entrants and the flat rate by saying, “No, we’re not going to do that—we’re going to do it differently”. If we are going to do this and think it is a good idea, and if we are going to have a different series of entrance requirements, how will we identify those people who need to be tested differently, to see that that they will benefit?

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord agree that this is not just a matter of fairness to the individual, having a focus on special needs of some sort, but a great loss to the country? For instance, there is increasing evidence and experience—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

This is a time-limited debate and we are behind time already. I ask the noble Lord to make his point to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, at another time. I apologise to the noble Lord but there is no time for interventions.

[Lord Addington]

I do have a moment to reply—which is the advantage of not being tied to notes. Yes; there is a waste to society. To go back to my point, if the wrong people are getting there, if you are not getting others properly qualified and they are not going through, and you want to create a fast track—which preferably will get people to the right position in society, which will benefit society—you have to identify it. I hope that the Minister will be in a position to say whether we will make some movement on this. I know that there has been some contact between us, but it is probably a good idea to let the rest of the world know what we are thinking about here. If we do not, as has just been mentioned on what I will call my physical right, it is a great way of wasting resources and the benefit to our society.

Secondly, in the debate on the National Citizen Service Bill—which, oddly, I managed to listen to about half of on a monitor and in the Chamber—it struck me that in a small way this was quite a nice idea. But it then struck me that many of the social activities that people might be removing themselves from because their parents do not do them already do this. In many sports clubs—especially the bigger ones, which have a mix of people from different backgrounds who interact—and art, drama and music groups, you have a point of contact with people outside your immediate group on a subject that allows you to interact socially. If you can do that, you have the aspiration and the idea that it is worth while to undertake the extra effort in things such as education.

This is about bringing things together. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, suggested that bringing bits of Whitehall together is a herculean task. The thing is that two Ministers come together and work until they are dripping with perspiration; they bring things together and then two Ministers come in who have new agendas, budgets and priorities. How do we integrate this across the board and not have people fighting with each other about their little patch of authority? It is a job that I am afraid we will always be going back to.

Can the Minister describe the practical educational terms used to identify those who will struggle—how much further progress have we made? When it comes to the use of outside bodies, what attempts are we making through things such as governing bodies of sports to say that part of their job, for which they get some support from government, is to make sure that people are aware—younger people and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, people who are reskilling and retraining later on—that these things are out there and you can act on them. Nothing will work by itself; if you go into a silo, you will stay in a silo and that is where you will end up.