Social Mobility Commission

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I certainly would never want to be called a chair; I have always required people to call me a chairman. That is the name of it, but perhaps I am a little old-fashioned.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, given that social mobility has been decreasing over several decades now, will the Minister define what the Social Mobility Commission and the new tsar should be doing to improve this? All the evidence shows that it is not working.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, it is working. The annual State of the Nation report from the Social Mobility Commission, published on 23 June, talks about the progress made towards improving social mobility in this country. Produced under the previous chairmanship of the commission, it sets out a new approach to social mobility. It introduces a new social mobility index, which provides a systematic way of measuring social mobility across the whole of the UK. Data will now be compiled annually and at longer intervals of five and 10 years. This is important because we need to show the trends and to be able to prove it, as at times we get conflicting evidence about what is happening to social mobility. Certainly, the number of children from deprived areas who are going to university is going up.