Social Mobility

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I failed my A-levels too, but somehow I struggled into your Lordships’ House. The Sutton Trust’s manifesto is admirable and I fully endorse its proposals. However, the changes sweeping through the economy are just huge. At this point, the Government must face up to three hard truths and I should like the Minister to comment on these.

Hard truth one: as the guru of mobility research, John Goldthorpe, has shown, upward mobility in the UK is falling, while downward mobility is rising. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this finding. It is the expansion of the gig economy, with all its insecurities, that stands in the way here. Do the Government recognise that improving mobility chances will be impossible without active and quite radical intervention into labour markets? Education is not the great leveller.

Hard truth two: further profound changes are affecting the future of work, which will deeply shape the prospects of the up-and-coming generation. Only 8% of the labour force works in manufacturing today, down from three times that number only a generation ago. White-collar and professional jobs are next in line. AI is already transforming a whole range of such occupations, in law, medicine and elsewhere. The implications for social mobility for the younger generation are far-reaching indeed. They are not for the distant future but are happening in the here and now, and we need action now.

Hard truth three: the Government embrace the idea of social mobility, I think, because it sounds less threatening than confronting inequality. Yet you absolutely cannot deal with the one without confronting the other. The UK is one of the most unequal of all the industrialised countries. There simply must be substantial redistribution, including between the generations, if the trends dislocating our society are to be confronted.