Social Mobility

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holmes on the debate, which is very timely. I am also delighted to have been here for the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Couttie. I served for 10 years on Westminster City Council and my husband served for 25 years, so I am particularly delighted that she comes from that background.

It was interesting listening to the speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for example, stressed the need for more development and encouragement in the ages of nought to five. I absolutely agree, because I was chairman of social services. In some of the ethnic groups, their only idea of how to care for their child was to keep them sedated and sit them in a big cardboard box in the kitchen while they did other work. Those children made no progress because they had no stimulus or outside interest; whereas other families were very active in encouraging their children to take interest in things, and they were given incentive and encouragement. That is very important.

My family background is that my grandparents went to Australia and ended up in Parkes because that was the end of the bullock train. You could not go any further. Then, by chance, my father got an education. There was one rich family in this town, which still has only about 10,000 people, who came to my grandfather, who ran a small dairy farm and said, “The education at this college is all paid for, and my boy won’t go, so I would like you to send one of your children”. It was offered to the eldest son, and he said, “No, it’s too late for me. I think the next boy should go”. That was my father.

My family said, “No, we cannot really spare him because we have got to get round and sell the milk”. The eldest boy said, “Well, I will do a double round”. Through that, my father got to that college, and he went from there to Sydney University. It was the first ever graduating year of pharmacy from Sydney University. Later, he was the deputy premier of New South Wales, and apparently the world’s only Minister for Public Health and Motherhood, so he achieved quite a lot. There were nine children in our family, and I think, because of that, he realised how very hard it is, and he brought in child endowment, which here we call child benefit, to help families.

He met my mother at Sydney University. She was very keen on education, and she had had to come from Queensland because there was no university there. She graduated in 1912, and was determined that all her children would get an education. My father did very well financially, but after he died things went terribly wrong, and the last two children did not get a penny. That was probably good for me, because I had to turn around and do something for myself. My father had believed we should all be worthy of our place in society. We should not just be sitting back because someone had made a financial success of things. That proved to be very important.

I think it is very important for all children to have encouragement from their families. They can have that encouragement only if the families know what the opportunities are and have an interest in the child achieving something. It is not a straightforward situation.

I found, in dental practice in Old Street, which was never smart in my day, in the 35 years I was there, the real problem was that so many of the parents or grandparents had very little English. This is where we can see the relevance of the statement that has been made today, that adult education is important, not only child education. People would come in for treatment, and a child would have to accompany them to explain what the problem was and then to translate what the dentist said to the parent or grandparent. Those women were completely cut off from society. I remember that Keith Joseph always said, “You can’t teach your children how to wash clothes unless you know how to wash clothes”. I think this is true. This cycle of deprivation has to be broken if we are going to give people opportunities for social mobility.

I see that the report issued by the Library mentions that the OECD in 2010 said that it is easier to advance in Australia and Canada than it is here. I think that is only because those countries are so much less developed. What concerns me more is a statement that London is pulling way ahead of other parts of the country in terms of opportunities in education. That should not be. It is very important that all the other big cities do everything they can to help their people.

Things need to be done to encourage people, particularly the young. Opportunities, encouragement, and a feeling that one can achieve something are important. Two things that I speak on pretty regularly I will comment on briefly. One is housing. Social mobility is pretty closely linked to having somewhere decent to live, where you can make a success of life. Therefore, there should be more social housing and more housing to rent and we should make sure that these holiday people do not take over valuable accommodation.

Another thing is nursing. I think we went too far—I think it was the Blair Government that did it—in saying that you had to have a university degree to become a nurse. Some of the very best nurses I know could never have got five As to get in. They were in a different category of nurse, and they were very good indeed. We should bring back that second tier in nursing which still exists in Canada and Australia. They brought in the A-levels and the superb university degrees, but they maintained that middle level as well. That is such an opportunity and a way for people to get social mobility, to enter a profession of that type and feel proud to be a member of it.