Social Mobility

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Choudrey’s excellent speech. He is a living embodiment of the truth that if you want to make it in modern Britain, you can. I pay tribute to his courage, and perhaps his wisdom, in selecting a debate with a two-minute time limit in which to make his maiden speech. His credentials speak for themselves but he has not mentioned his generosity to various charitable causes that have sought to advance the social mobility of others. He has a wealth of experience and expertise to benefit your Lordships’ House and I am sure we all look forward to his future contributions, perhaps at even greater length than we heard today.

I grew up in Gateshead when it was one of the most socially deprived towns in the country. I failed all my O-levels and left school at 16, an outcome that was the norm rather than the exception at the time, but I was blessed with having wonderful parents who still encouraged me. I started running a youth club at my local church and then worked with others to establish a new non-selective state school for the town that would promote academic excellence by transforming the expectations of teachers and parents and, most importantly, of students themselves regarding what they could achieve. Today it continues to produce the best academic results among state schools in the north-east of England. Great achievements stem from great expectations and are delivered by great efforts.

That combination of experiences leads me to believe that too often young people from economically poor communities are portrayed as victims of circumstance to be pitied rather than equipped to be victors over circumstance to be admired. Telling people that somehow the cards have been stacked against them from the start and that other people are to blame is not only factually wrong but erodes self-esteem, breeds resentment and corrodes personal responsibility in the very people we are seeking to help. On 18 January the Times carried an interview with Moloko Matsapola, principal of one of the most successful state schools in South Africa. Asked about its success, he answered that the reason for it was a belief in the

“power of the human spirit … This is far more important than any of the facilities we don’t have, so we always find a way. We don’t believe in excuses or talking about what might make us fail, we are too busy identifying our ambitions and making them happen.”

So, if you want more social mobility, start raising expectations and aspirations and stop raising excuses. Change attitudes and you will change altitudes. Tell people to pick up their ambitions and their dreams and to work hard. As Ayn Rand said, the question is not who is going to let me; it is who is going to stop me.