Oral Answers to Questions

Jo Platt Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that this is a challenging target, but, as I said previously, we set a challenging target in 2010 and we met it by the end of the Parliament. I am confident that we will meet our target again. In particular, we will be taking further measures in relation to SMEs. We will use transparency to encourage large businesses to employ more SMEs and make prompt payment part of the selection process for larger suppliers, which is the point that he raised. I can tell the House that we will be bringing forward proposals on that very shortly.

[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps his Department has taken to co-ordinate the Government’s work on social mobility.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr David Lidington)]

The Cabinet Office is responsible for co-ordinating action to increase socioeconomic diversity in the civil service. We are delivering on all recommendations made by the Bridge Group in its 2016 report.

[Jo Platt]

The recent Social Mobility Commission report found that the worst-performing areas on social mobility are no longer inner-city areas but remote, rural and coastal areas and former industrial areas. What steps will the Government take to redress the funding imbalance that the north faces and to tackle social mobility issues in post-industrial towns such as Leigh?

[Mr Lidington]

The Social Mobility Commission report identified action on education, housing and employment as the key steps needing to be taken, and those are the exactly the things to which the Prime Minister and the Government are giving priority. For example, we have 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools than we did in 2010.