Social Mobility

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, a fair society is an open society, one in which every individual is free to succeed. The lack of social mobility is damaging to individuals and leaves countries’ economic potential unfulfilled. That is why improving social mobility is the principal goal of Her Majesty’s Government’s social policy.

Her Majesty’s Government have recognised that things can be done to aid the development of social mobility. Some examples are the creation of the business compact to encourage fair access to job opportunities; the increase in the pupil premium; access to early years education for two year-olds; the youth contract; and the increase in the availability of apprenticeships. Evidence shows that improvements are being made in some areas but there is still more that can be done.

In May 2012 the Social Mobility APPG published a report, Seven Key Truths about Social Mobility. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who is in her place, and the members of the APPG for their work in this area. The report identified that character and resilience are the missing link in mobility,

“a force at play throughout the lifecycle but too often overlooked in favour of more tangible, easier-to- measure factors”.

So what can be defined as character and resilience? What characteristics does an individual possess that make for resilience? The list is long: tenacity and perseverance; the ability to overcome obstacles; self-esteem; self-discipline; aspiration and expectation; understanding the relationship between effort and reward; and staying power and self-reliance.

The golden age of social mobility is often said to have been between the post-war years and the 1970s. I am sure that many of us here today are the product of parents and ancestors who demonstrated character and resilience in their lives. My mother was adopted into a family where the sons, much older than my mother, who had survived the First World War returned to what seemed a very bleak future. They organised a barrow and started a business selling groceries on the streets of Bradford. The business developed and my grandmother became the owner, with her sons, of a successful grocery and delicatessen business, no longer working from a wheelbarrow. The family recognised the value of education, which in those days was not freely available, and paid for my mother to attend a good school. Their success was down to drive and resilience.

My father lost his father when he was very young. There was no widow’s pension in those days to support his mother and his partially sighted brother. My father was bright and was offered a place at the grammar school. However, his mother, who worked as a housekeeper to provide a home for her family, could not afford to pay the fees so my father could not accept the place. He had to leave school at 14 and work long hours, studying for a degree at night. He became an apprentice to Mr Rolls of Rolls-Royce fame and developed a successful career as a professional engineer.

I know that there are many who fight against the odds today and succeed in spite of all that life throws at them. I fully approve of the care that the welfare state provides today in all its forms, but I sometimes wonder how much resilience we have lost along the way. Governments have a role in ensuring that barriers to mobility are removed and that equality is truly achievable. The key determinant is, however, the attitude of the individual—the fire in the belly. The desire to succeed comes from within and is not something that government and state can create.