Social Mobility

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing another debate on this incredibly important subject. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social mobility in the previous Parliament, I have read with increasing alarm the numerous reports produced by the Social Mobility Commission. Its recent report, “Time for Change”, was a real wake-up call. As my hon. Friend said, it is the challenge of our time. I was attracted to the idea of breaking down recommendations into four life stages, but the report shows that unless we get the right measures in place at the first stage in the early years, everything else becomes much more difficult. Sadly, falling behind in those early years is often a portent for one’s entire life.

Hon. Members have already talked about the geographical divide, but there is also a generational one. I do not believe that the recent general election was a ringing endorsement of the status quo. We saw that the more young people engaged with the question of what they wanted from the Government, the more they turned away from the existing set-up—and who can blame them? Do they want to better themselves and study at university? There are more opportunities now, but they come with an eye-watering debt that might never be paid off. Do they want to own a home of their own? Unless the bank of mum and dad is there to fall back on, it could be a long wait. Do they want to build a career in a profession doing something rewarding, financially and intellectually? Those opportunities exist, but for the few, not the many.

Young people’s more likely experience in the job market will be casual work, low pay and chronic insecurity. As the commission’s report highlights, young people’s wages have fallen by 16%; one in five people in the UK are stuck on low pay—a higher proportion than in comparable nations—wages have stagnated in real terms, leading to falling living standards, particularly for young people; and, although youth unemployment has fallen, the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has barely changed. The number of young people receiving careers advice or work experience has fallen, and more new apprenticeships have gone to older workers than to younger ones.

As the report suggests, we should adopt what I would describe as a “mobility in all” approach, and examine every Government policy or proposal for how it would improve social mobility. One good example of how we are not doing well at that is the Government’s decision to expand the number of medical school places. The all-party parliamentary group’s report on access to the professions recognised medicine as one of the areas in which those from privileged backgrounds are disproportionately represented. I recently asked the Minister a written question on what steps the Government were taking to address that. His response was:

“Funding an additional 1,500 medical school places in England will provide more opportunities for people to study”.

Perhaps it will, but without further intervention it is more likely just to repeat the pattern of professions being dominated by people from fee-paying schools.

However, it is not only on access to professions that we need to do more. If the reports that up to a half of all jobs will be automated in the next decade are correct, we will have to undertake a massive, state-sponsored exercise in reskilling the workforce. The world of work is changing rapidly. Training and redeployment are threads that should run through a person’s entire life. Three, four or five career changes will be the norm in the future, and we are not ready for that.