Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I think that the lessons that were learned are feeding every aspect of the work that is happening across the opportunity mission. For example, there is the need for high-quality schools and excellent teaching throughout the whole of the country; the need for young people to have the access to skills wherever they are in the country; the need for our higher education sector to do more to ensure that all those who can benefit from higher education can access it, which will be a key part of the Government’s higher education reforms; and, of course, the need to start early in children’s lives, to ensure that they have access to early years education of the highest quality. It is work on all those areas that will ensure not just that the benefits are felt equally across the country but that we are able to close some of the gaps that the Sutton Trust report identified.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will the Minister look very carefully at social mobility in rural areas and, in particular, the fact that the rural deprivation grant was withdrawn, which has had a major impact in North Yorkshire? I pay tribute to the work in rural areas that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans has done as head of the Rural Coalition. He will be greatly missed in this House.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness is right that there are particular challenges in rural areas—and, particularly, as she identifies, in terms of the pockets of poverty found there, where perhaps there is no infrastructure of support, that might explain why those children and young people in London are doing comparatively better than people in other parts of the country. She makes a very fair point, and we need to keep a focus on rural poverty and how we ensure that children and young people in rural areas get the opportunities that they deserve.