Social Mobility Strategy

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am sure that on all sides of the House we welcome a commitment to improving social mobility. All of us who want a fairer society want more room at the top and people to succeed on the basis of ability and not birth. It is also clear that there is much to be done. The figures at the beginning of the strategy make that clear, and I agree with it that:

“The lack of social mobility is damaging for individuals”.

It also leaves the country’s economic potential unfulfilled.

The Statement says that the promotion of social mobility is,

“the principal objective of the coalition Government’s social policy”.

That is also welcome. In that respect, and in the appointment of my right honourable friend Alan Milburn to head up this work, the Government are continuing an emphasis that Gordon Brown gave the last Government when he became Prime Minister.

I am the first to say that the last Government—alongside lifting half a million children out of poverty, embedding the principles of Every Child Matters, establishing universal early years provision for the first time, and a record number of children getting GCSEs, and ensuring a record number of students going to university—could have done more on social mobility. That is precisely why Alan Milburn was commissioned to write his report at the beginning of 2009, so today’s strategy has a familiar feel to it as something of a reheat of the last Milburn report, and on that basis there is not a lot to criticise as far as it goes. On the three actions set out in the strategy, there is nothing wrong with establishing a new public body to monitor progress. I welcome the publication of indicators of progress. And, of course, the final action point of a group of Ministers chaired by Nick Clegg is bound to add significant value.

However, I am bound to ask: where is the beef? Is this it? How do these three actions counteract the damage already done by this Tory-led Government? Let us, like the strategy, take the life-cycle approach. Before a child is born, support for parents, especially the mother, is important. What will be the social mobility effect of abolishing the health in pregnancy grant? Then life begins and we find that the baby credit element of tax credit has gone, the Sure Start maternity grant is cut for a significant number of women, and the childcare element of tax credits and child benefit are gone for a growing number of middle- income families as thousands more move into the top rate of tax. Let us hope that the child is healthy, because there is a strong link between health inequalities and social mobility. Just last month, the British Medical Journal published a report saying that the shambles of the NHS reforms risks making child health worse because of the lack of access to specialist paediatricians, a general view supported by the Government’s own Commissioning Support Programme. Incidentally, how come the Government launched a consultation on these reforms yesterday, during local election purdah?

Let us hope that the child’s family does not live in private rented accommodation, especially here in London. Shelter estimates that housing benefit changes will force 129,000 children to move to more affordable homes with, as the Government’s own impact assessment says,

“an adverse impact on work to reduce child poverty and … children’s schooling could be affected”.

Before they get to school, the parents and the children might be lucky enough to get support from one of the remaining Sure Start children’s centres. Much has been made of 15 hours of free pre-school support for some two year-olds and all three and four year-olds, but where will they go for this support? Children’s centres are fundamental to the early intervention that Frank Field’s poverty report put such stress on; yet despite the Prime Minister’s spin in the other place, the fact is that hundreds are closing and thousands are reducing their services.

Then we get to school. The concept of the new pupil premium is welcome, but the reality is that, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted, schools in more deprived areas will receive a smaller pupil premium than similarly deprived schools in more affluent areas. In order to pay for it, the two most successful schemes that academics tell us narrowed attainment gaps between rich and poor children, London Challenge and Extended Schools, have been either scrapped or allowed to wither on the vine. If a child is not academic, he or she will be written off and turned off school by the English baccalaureate that exclusively values academic attainment and thus incentivises schools to narrow their focus. However, if a child is not too disengaged by the narrower focus of school, will he or she stay on after 16? Some 600,000 students who would have received the educational maintenance allowance will no longer qualify for financial support, even with the new replacement scheme. That is another attack on middle- income families.

If children manage to stay on, what about university? Most universities are now trebling their fees. Despite warnings, it appears that the Government cannot afford this and look set to reduce the number of student places accordingly. What does that do for social mobility? Does the Minister really believe that families who just miss out on a bursary will think it worth encouraging their children to take on all that debt, and will not some universities go out of business? London Metropolitan University has more black and Afro-Caribbean students than the whole of the Russell Group put together. Can the Minister assure us that universities of that kind will be protected to aid social mobility?

Finally, what about work? Unemployment is up 600,000 since the election; it was falling when I left office as Employment Minister. There are 60,000 more unemployed young people. Unemployment among women has risen every month for the past eight months. Graduate unemployment is at a record high. And what is the government offer on work—that most basic tool of social mobility? Well, there are some mini work experience opportunities and now some internships, including at Cowley Street for the Liberal Democrats. It is reported that these were being advertised yesterday as unpaid, as voluntary. Obviously, that is better than the Tories auctioning them off as a fundraiser, but how does it sit with compliance with the minimum wage brought in by the previous Government? How does it compare with the half a million opportunities for young people that I was responsible for? Our young person’s guarantee was scrapped. The guarantee of training, a job or work experience for 18 to 25 year- olds has gone. The Future Jobs Fund has gone.

A life-cycle approach in this strategy is welcome, but I wish the Government luck in making it work after the destruction of the past 10 months. Social mobility is an important cause for us to rally around, but I am not sure that people will take this strategy seriously. It is short on positive action and it does nothing to address the attacks on social mobility already launched by this Government. If the Deputy Prime Minister wants to be taken seriously on this, as with other things, he will have to do a lot better.