Social Mobility

Debate between Hazel Blears and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be in Westminster Hall this afternoon with you, Mr Hollobone, as our Chair. I first thank the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for his tour de force on the interim report of the all-party group on social mobility. He illustrated not only the depth of his knowledge, but his personal commitment to and passion for the issue.

There are some issues in Parliament on which we take dramatically opposing views. We argue our corners and have some pretty intense disagreements. I am happy to say that that is not the case in the all-party group. That is an important point when we talk about social mobility, because social mobility matters to every Member of Parliament and every family in our constituencies. Yes, we will have different approaches and different policy prescriptions, but the absolute imperative is to ensure that we are utilising the skills, the talents, the passion and the commitment of everybody in our community, not just for their own personal fulfilment but for the competitiveness and the ability of our economy to thrive.

The hon. Member for East Hampshire has given us a really good overview of the subject, so I will concentrate on just a few of the issues. The all-party group discovered that opportunities outside school, such as those to widen networks, make connections and meet people that we would not normally meet, are key to raising ambition and aspiration, especially among young people; and that social mobility and the ability to get on does not stop at school, college or university. There is the opportunity for second chances and third chances. We must never write people off and say that that is all they can be. There is always the chance to get on later.

I want to talk about issues of personal resilience, confidence and self-esteem, which are often well taught in independent and private education establishments but not so well taught across the state system, yet they are key to people getting on. I pay tribute to our noble friend, Baroness Tyler, who has made a personal study of the subject and has done some excellent work. The whole area has not been particularly well explored, because it is less able to be analytically dissected and it is subject to a lot of anecdotal evidence. It is a rich seam for us to pursue.

Let me explain why I feel so passionate about this issue. We all come to this with our own particular stories. Just last week, I was contacted by a young man from my constituency. He has a degree and has written 300 letters to get a job. He has not had a single interview and he is absolutely desperate to know how to take the next step in his life. I think that it was the number 300 that rang so many bells for me and brought home so many memories. I left college with a law degree. I am not sure why I studied law, but I think that it was because both my parents had left school at 14. We did not have any professional people in our family. I went to do a law degree because I thought that was how people changed the world. As a lawyer, I rapidly discovered that I certainly could not change the world; I could only interpret the law. Then I realised that if I wanted to change the world, I would have to make the law, which is why I ended up in Parliament.

When I first graduated and I had done my Law Society examinations, I wrote precisely 300 letters to try to get an interview as a trainee solicitor. As a family, we knew absolutely nobody. My dad was a factory worker, and it was when his firm got taken over by a multinational that things changed. It was through his foreman, his foreman’s boss and his boss’s boss that I managed, unbelievably, to get an interview with the best law firm in Manchester, because it held the account for the multinational company.

I went for the interview; it was probably the most frightening experience of my life. It was far worse than a constituency selection meeting. I went to the top floor of a very grand office block in the city centre. I was met by the senior partner, so it was clear that this account was a serious matter to him in terms of his fee income. He was one of those elderly gentlemen who peer over half-moon glasses. He sat in a very high chair and we commenced the interview, which went incredibly well. Amazingly, we got on. We explored all the different parts of the law. I actually had some good commercial results in my various exams and he was interested in me. We got halfway through the interview and it felt like one of those moments in life when something really exciting is going to happen. My heart was pounding and I thought, “ I’m going to get this job. I have written 300 letters, I haven’t had a single interview and I am going to get this job.” I was overcome. He said to me, “Tell me, Miss Blears, this interview is going rather well, isn’t it? We are getting along fine, aren’t we? Just remind me what your father does in the company”. I said, “My father is a fitter and he works in the factory.” With that, he closed his leather folder, and said, “Good morning, Miss Blears, I think that I have heard enough.” He showed me the door.

That was one of those defining moments in life. I left the office, got into the lift and burst into tears—not for myself particularly, although I was upset. What he had done was insult my whole family, especially my father. He had exercised the power that he had, as a very senior professional individual, over a young, powerless person. If anything drove me into the arms of the Labour party, it was probably that experience. Many of us are shaped and formed by our experiences in that way. Luckily, I managed to get my articles and became a solicitor, eventually ending up in the British Cabinet, which is a strange journey.

That story explains why I feel so passionately about this issue. There are literally hundreds of thousands of young people in our communities who are full of talent, passion and ability, and because they do not know anybody, they cannot get a foot in the door. They cannot get on that first rung of the ladder. Once we give someone a chance, it is up to them after that; they will make what they are going to make of life. It is so unfair that even today, in this country and in many other countries, it is still who we know and not what we know. Government policy is nowhere near developed enough in this area because it is so difficult.

When Labour was in government and we were formulating the future jobs fund, one of the most stunning facts that came to me was that seven out of 10 people get their next job through somebody they know. That might not be the great professional job; it might be the plasterer’s job, the joiner’s job, a small company or a job with somebody in the community. Only one or two people get their next job through the jobcentre system, so why are we not spending more of our resource on expanding people’s networks, contacts and the number of people with whom they have relationships, because that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives? Instead, a functional and structured system often operates in jobcentres, which does not necessarily give people that richness of contacts.

In the days before we had iPhones and BlackBerrys, people often said that a filofax was worth as much to them as an undergraduate degree in terms of the progress that they would make in later life. It is very often those contacts that are made, particularly in the independent school sector, that can be called up because they may know somebody who knows somebody who can help. It may be one’s parents who can help or someone in the wider family. Yet so many people do not have those contacts.

Only 7% of people go to private school, but people from private schools account for more than a third of Members of Parliament, more than half of FTSE chief executives, half of our top journalists—and that is growing at an incredible rate—and still 70% of High Court judges, so we have a long way to go before we have more of a meritocracy and before we are utilising the skills and talents of our people.

If we look at what happens outside schools, we will find that very often there is top-up tutoring, especially in more affluent families, which gives people that head start in life. The six-week summer holiday for better-off families is often devoted to enrichment activities, sports, culture, art and drama. All those activities build the key skills around resilience, self-esteem and confidence. For children from poorer families, that six-week holiday is often a nightmare. Parents cannot find child care, which leaves children to their own devices day after day after day. It is a wasted period and there is a learning loss for those poorer children who find that they have fallen behind when they return to school in September. A much more attractive proposition is shorter terms and not such long holidays so that children can keep up with their learning.

On the later paths to mobility, we have heard some good evidence from employers—from Channel 4, which runs a talent programme for paid internships and from Wates Construction, which is offering work experience, apprenticeships and that next step to young people, often from very troubled backgrounds. We have more and more employers being prepared to take the risk, which is not inconsiderable for them, to take on ex-offenders and give them a chance at that first start in life. I have worked with Morrison’s supermarket in Salford. When the store was being set up, I said that I wanted 50% of the jobs for local people from this really tough estate. It said, “We can’t do 50%, Hazel.” I said that it simply had to, and we worked with the people incredibly closely. We managed to get 82% of the jobs in that store for the people from that estate, many of whom had never worked before, never had that chance and never believed that somebody would believe in them enough to give them an opportunity. I have no doubt that those people—particularly the young people—will have their life changed as they progress through to apprenticeships and hopefully to managerial positions in the future, but unless we had put in place a programme of pre-employment training, to get them to the point where they could actually turn up for an interview and present themselves properly, they would never have had that chance. There are great employers out there that are willing to give people a chance and willing to take a risk, and we need to do more to praise and highlight the really good employers in our country that are just as motivated as we politicians are on this agenda.

I absolutely welcome Alan Milburn’s appointment to the child poverty and social mobility commission; he will be a great force for good. I have ploughed through his first report, “Fair Access to Professional Careers”, which runs to several hundred pages. It is a very good report. I was particularly struck by his phrase that

“the glass ceiling has been scratched but not broken.”

I had a vision of all these hands pushing at that ceiling, and he is right that we really need to break through it. He highlights the fact that in the professions in which he has particularly taken an interest, such as law and medicine, we are still not making sufficient progress. He points out that 40% of law graduates are from the three highest socio-economic groups and only 14% are from the three lowest socio-economic groups, and that 48% of journalism students—I am not particularly on a crusade against the press in saying this—come from the highest socio-economic groups and only 14% from the three lowest socio-economic groups. In the days when becoming a journalist meant someone getting a job on the local paper and working their way up the system, those figures were very different indeed, and if we are creating a system where journalists and—I must say— politicians are increasingly coming from a narrow background, the political discourse and dialogue becomes an internal dialogue rather than one that engages the public.

I am pleased to say that law firms are doing their bit at the moment. As a former lawyer, I hope that my experience—the experience that I referred to earlier—is never repeated. There is also the PRIME initiative—the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise—as part of which 23 top law firms and the Sutton Trust have got together. The law firms have agreed that, for each training contract that they award over the next few years, they will put in place an equivalent work experience programme for somebody from a disadvantaged background, to try to get them up to the stage where they could realistically apply for a training programme. Many of the biggest law firms are absolutely focused on that programme, and I commend them for that.

As I say, I hope that nobody else experiences what I did, although I must say that when I was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government I managed to go back to the particular law firm in question to do an event for it. The senior partner who had interviewed me had long retired, but the current senior partner was mortified when I told him my story. It was a great experience.

I want to say something about politics, because there is a problem in journalism but there is a big, big problem in politics, and we have a responsibility to try to lead on this issue. I have been particularly exercised by the increasing number of politicians who are coming into this place from what I have called a transmission belt: they work in Parliament for an MP; they become a special adviser; they are parachuted into a relatively safe seat at fairly short notice; and then they are fast-tracked into ministerial office and the Cabinet. I made a speech about this subject when I was in the Cabinet myself; I was not exactly the most popular person the next morning, as people can imagine. I said that I thought that process was bad for democracy, bad for policy making and bad for governance of the country. If everybody comes from the same background there is groupthink, and there needs to be challenge in policy making as well.

In 1979, just 3% of MPs said that they came from a political adviser-type background. According to House of Commons figures, by the last election that had risen to nearly 15%, and the Smith Institute’s latest research says that the figure is 25%. A quarter of all our MPs have come through the route that I have described and I believe that we are now creating a political elite, which makes the problem of people’s disaffection with politics ever more acute.

The Hansard Society has found that 30% of people feel completely ignored by decision makers and that 85% of people feel they have no influence over national decisions. In addition, the Speaker’s Conference found that people increasingly feel that MPs do not talk like them, do not look like them and have little connection with them.

There is something practical that we can do. For the last year, I have been working with colleagues from different parties—the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), from the Liberal Democrats, and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), from the Conservative party—and with the Speaker, to set up the Speaker’s parliamentary placements scheme. We have raised a considerable amount of money from very good companies and our first 10 people started on the scheme last year; they are just about to graduate from it now. It has been inspiring to see people coming from completely different backgrounds into Parliament. They work four days a week with an MP. On a Friday, they take part in a fantastic programme put on by the House of Commons Commission, which is about how a Bill goes through Parliament, how to do research and statistics, personal development, public speaking and going out and taking visitors around the House of Commons. It has been amazing.

The people on that scheme include James, who was an unemployed joiner in Glasgow. He could not get a job, but he was passionate about his politics. He spent 10 months with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. We have also had Matthew, a young man from Northern Ireland, who is a passionate Conservative. He spent time here and—fingers crossed—I think that he is about to get a full-time job with an MP, and if so his life will be very different in the future.

We are just about to open our recruitment for the second year of the scheme. So, if there is anybody out there who reads Hansard and thinks they would like to come into Parliament from a very different background to others, bringing something to our life here that helps to leaven the mix of people who might think about going into politics, I urge them to get in touch with the Social Mobility Foundation, which runs the scheme on our behalf. Equally, I say to MPs that if they are interested in taking one of these young people into their office and giving them the chance to see that politics really makes a difference, that is something practical that we can do about improving social mobility.

As I say, the Speaker’s scheme has been amazing. I did not think that it would actually get off the ground, but I hope that we now have some sustainability for the future. I am delighted to say that after I challenged the Deputy Prime Minister in our debate on his social mobility strategy—in which he mentioned our scheme without actually having given any money to it—he has now decided to commission a few places for people from low-income backgrounds who also have particular disabilities, and who therefore would perhaps find it doubly difficult to come and work here in Parliament. We are delighted to ensure that we can attract people to come along. That is the first bit of Government investment and I hope that we will see more of it in the future.

That is our national scheme. I just want to mention briefly one thing that I am doing in my local area. Like most MPs, I think that if we talk about national politics it is incumbent upon us to try to ensure that we do something practical—something that works—at a local level too. In Salford, we have set up a scheme called Kids without Connections, because I am getting so many young people now, such as the young man who wrote to me and said that he had applied for 300 jobs, who come to me and say, “You’re my last resort, Hazel. What can I do?” Like most MPs, I have very good contacts with the employers in my constituency: in construction; in retail; in hospitality; in catering; and in the public sector. We have now had a big event with all of our employers. We have 70 employers registered that are all prepared to give work experience to young people in my constituency, so that those young people can do two, three or perhaps four weeks of work experience over the summer. I have 150 young people who have volunteered. We are now doing what I suppose is the “speed dating”, which is matching the employers and the young people. We already have had a dozen jobs being offered—not just work experience placements, but a dozen real jobs—as a result of the programme. When the young people have done their work experience, the employers and the young people will come to Parliament for a reception, to celebrate their working together and to get an experience of Parliament.

That scheme is a very simple one and if anyone else is interested in the practicalities of making such a scheme happen, I must say that at least it gives the young people involved a taste of work and what it is like to be in an employment environment. Once again, it ensures that they will not simply settle and accept that their life will never be any different. That is something practical that we can do, and I pay tribute to Charlotte Chinn, who has been amazing in helping to make that scheme happen in my constituency. Supporting it is one of the most inspiring things that I do.

The final practical thing that I want to do is to mention an organisation called Future First; some Members might know about it already. It is relatively new, having been going now for a couple of years. What it tries to do is to set up—a very complicated phrase—“alumni networks for state schools”. In the private education sector, alumni networks are automatic. Current students at a school know the students who were there before them. Former students raise money, act as mentors or role models, come in and share their experiences at the school and consequently they enrich the school’s curriculum. That has never happened in state schools. But for the last couple of years, Future First has been organising programmes across London and they now want to expand across the country. What those programmes do is to track former pupils—using Facebook or Friends Reunited—to see whether they would be willing to come back into their former school, to share their experiences with the current students and act as role models. Amazingly, 30% of former pupils have said that they would love to do that. That is a potential resource of up to 10 million people in this country who would come back and be role models for state school students in the future.

I was struck by what one of the students said:

“In private schools, they’re told that they can conquer the world, they’re given motivation, they’re told they can win. We’re not told that in state schools so it’s harder for us”.

That is absolutely what it is like. Luckily, when I was growing up, my mum said, “You work hard: the world’s your oyster. You can be anything. You can do anything in the world.” If people do not have that push behind them from home, and do not get it in the school they attend, it is much more difficult to have the ambition and aspiration that will take them on their journey. The work that Future First does is incredibly valuable, and we have a huge untapped resource that we could draw on, to make the situation very different. As ever, we have a problem, but I like to think of practical solutions that we can bring to bear. I am sure that the Minister will be in the same place. It is important to have some programmes to point to that are making a difference, and try to scale them up.

I have been lucky in my life. I have met people at important points, who have guided me and shaped my life. They have encouraged me to do different things. For that I am incredibly grateful. Some of them were inspirational teachers who made a connection with their students and gave them a broader outlook on life. Some were people I met at work, and some were friends and family. I worry enormously, however, that many young people do not have that in their lives, and that their talents go to waste. I do not think we can allow that.

I have a couple of questions to which I would like the Minister’s response. First, what action is he taking to widen the networks of people from the poorest backgrounds? If we have any money to spend—and I know it is tight—I want it to be spent in a way that gets results, rather than on sustaining a system that does not really achieve.

I am very concerned about the advertising of unpaid internships. I do not mean four or six weeks’ work experience, but full-time jobs, where people are expected to turn up and do a series of proper tasks, and take on responsibilities, but get no pay. That is illegal in this country, and people with such jobs must be paid the minimum wage. Yet it is still lawful to advertise those unpaid, full-time, long term internships. That is a mismatch. If something is unlawful it should not be lawful to advertise it. I should like to hear the Minister’s response. Will he support more robust enforcement with respect to unlawful, unpaid internships, so that employers must pay the national minimum wage as they should?

Will he also support the establishment of alumni networks? I know that some money has been granted from the Cabinet Office social action fund, which is welcome, but it would be a practical and cheap way of making a difference.

Finally, will the Minister recognise some of the great employers that I have met in the past year, primarily through the Speaker’s placement scheme? The people who help and support us include Morrison’s supermarkets, Prudential, AXA, Aviva, the Royal Mail and Clifford Chance—every spectrum of corporate life. They are just as passionate about what we are doing as we are, and they make a difference. We should thank them and encourage others to take part too.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank the debate’s two sponsors for opening the batting. I thought it might be helpful if I ran through how the debate will proceed. It must close at 5.30. The Opposition spokesman, Shabana Mahmood, will be called no later than 4.55, to speak for 15 minutes. The Minister will be called no later than 5.15, to speak for 15 minutes, and then Damian Hinds has two minutes to wind up.

Between now and the speech of Shabana Mahmood, there are seven hon. Members who have said they want to speak. That would give each of them 12 to 13 minutes. The running order will be Mark Garnier, Meg Hillier, Mark Pawsey, Mike Crockart, Jackie Doyle-Price, Kelvin Hopkins and Martin Vickers.

That may all change at 4 o’clock when the Chair changes, but until then that is going to be the order.