Social Mobility: Treasury Reform

Justine Greening Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered social mobility and Treasury reform.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I called this debate because I passionately believe that this country’s most powerful and most important resource is its people, and it is simply unacceptable that in the 21st century we still do not have equality of opportunity for people in Britain.

I am someone who knows what it is like not to have all the opportunities you want on the doorstep and not to be connected to those opportunities. I came into politics to get change on the ground for people, not just to debate what needs to happen. That is why about a year ago, with the Harrison Centre for Social Mobility, I established the social mobility pledge—to get action on the ground, working with businesses.

Hundreds of businesses have now stepped up to the plate to provide more opportunity for more young people, by getting into schools and helping to raise aspiration, talking about careers, allowing young people to come into the workplace to get work experience or apprenticeships and, crucially, looking at recruitment practices. Those companies are making sure that their approach on recruitment means they are open to all the talent out there. Hundreds of companies are involved. Already, social mobility pledge companies collectively employ more than 2.5 million people.

That work has taken me all over the country, from Sunderland to Hull, from Bradford to Manchester. With those companies and organisations, we are a coalition of the willing. We are finding out what works on the ground and are then spreading that insight and knowledge further and faster and creating a race to the top. The social mobility pledge is doing practical work to get more opportunity to millions of young people. I thank the businesses and organisations that are part of it, and part of this push.

This is a debate about social mobility and, of course, I noticed the announcement from the great leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at the weekend, ditching improving social mobility. I am sure the shadow Minister will want to respond on that, but clearly social mobility is just a distraction from the class war that Corbyn’s Labour party is engaged in.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the right hon. Lady please refer to Members by their constituency?

[Justine Greening]

Of course. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has the sense, I think, that aspiration is a dirty word and is therefore not something that other people should feel is a good thing. That is wrong.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I was going to wait until my contribution to respond to the right hon. Lady, but it is quite clear that that is not the policy of the Labour party or of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). We want as many people as possible to do well, not just a chosen few in a grammar-school society of the type the right hon. Lady proposes.

[Justine Greening]

I thought the hon. Lady would probably say that. Unfortunately, that illustrates that the Opposition have not understood what social mobility means. It means equality of opportunity. It would probably be better—this is why I raised the point—if we stopped arguing about semantics and started talking about finding common ground on how to get change for the better for millions of young people and communities currently disconnected from opportunity or too far from it. If this just becomes a debate on semantics, which is what I worry the right hon. Member for Islington North is trying to turn it into, we will not get anywhere fast. I will come on to why that is a problem, but the topic of this debate is that, while there are broader problems around how we debate achieving social mobility, which is why it has not happened, there is a bigger problem, which is about how the Government approach social mobility and the Treasury’s place within that.

Let us be absolutely clear: achieving social mobility means we achieve equality of opportunity for everyone in our country, irrespective of where they start, who they are and what their background is. It is not—I repeat, not—just about the gifted few.

I want to see system change. I have talked about the practical work I am doing on the ground with businesses and organisations through the social mobility pledge, outside of the Government, but if we are to finally crack the nut—unlike the Labour party, I do not believe we should give up trying to achieve social mobility—we have to ensure change inside the Government. To my mind, that starts with the Treasury, and that is why I called this debate.

After eight years in government, overwhelmingly as a Cabinet Minister and running three different Departments, my conclusion is that we effectively need to abolish the Treasury in its current form. What we have right now is dysfunctional and not fit for purpose. It does not achieve the transformation in opportunity and social mobility that Britain needs.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing this debate. She has a long interest in the topic. She referred to the abolition of the Treasury. Has she indicated that to the 10 Conservative hopefuls for Prime Minister?

[Justine Greening]

I will set out my wider strategy on why I think the Treasury in its current form is not fit for purpose. I hope in holding the debate that some of the arguments will get cut-through. If we are here to improve lives, for young people in particular, and to connect those young people to opportunity, things have to radically change, including in government. We need fundamental change in how the Government look at and invest taxpayers’ money, and that means the Treasury.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate and on her work on social mobility over many years. I think, like me, she was comprehensively educated—like many on the Conservative Benches—and joined the Conservative party precisely because we are the party of opportunity and aspiration. On the point raised by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), does she agree that we need to put pressure on the Conservative candidates to make sure that investment in education, which is a key enabler of social mobility, is a hot topic and something that every single one of them should have as a top priority should they become leader?

[Justine Greening]

I agree. I am setting out how to fix the underlying problem of why we are underinvesting in people in our country and their potential. That starts with the Treasury. In my view, the Treasury has a twofold problem—first, how it operates across Government and, secondly, its policy approach.

On how it operates, it starts going wrong with the Treasury—UK plc’s finance department—having its own separate strategy from the Prime Minister, the chief executive. We have seen this down the years. It is traditional to see Chancellors at loggerheads with their Prime Ministers. We would never see a finance director able to countermand the CEO and undermine their strategy in any other organisation, yet that is exactly what we see, year to year and day to day. It has happened under Governments of every colour with the Treasury, as it is currently set up. Time and again, we end up with a Prime Minister, who is meant to be running the country, with one strategy, and a Chancellor with a different one, and both at loggerheads and going nowhere fast. It is no wonder that Prime Ministers do not get to deliver their strategies when the finance Department has an entirely separate one.

Parliament has a Budget speech every single year; it is essentially the Government’s strategy statement to Parliament and MPs for the year. It is not, however, the Prime Minister who delivers the strategy statement; it is the Chancellor. That does not make sense at all. Of course, these Budget statements are traditionally packed with politically driven, willy-waving, “look-at-me” projects for the Chancellor. Most are not even Treasury ideas. The best ideas are hoovered up from every other Secretary of State running Departments across Government, and they are generally not even the Treasury’s. Worst of all, most of these excellent policy announcements—for example, the one that we made a couple of years ago on vocational education and T-levels—are held up in order to wait for the Chancellor to announce them in a Budget statement. That is entirely dysfunctional, and it has to stop.

We should abolish the Budget statement in its current form, as delivered by the Chancellor. By all means, let us downgrade it and have it as a very important, but functional, annual presentation of the nation’s finances. Why do we not replace it with a Queen’s Speech update? This could be a proper strategy speech for Parliament every year, delivered by the Prime Minister. There is no reason why a Queen’s Speech update—a strategy speech—could not introduce a Finance Bill. I have listened to enough Chancellors effectively introduce other Departments’ Bills on social care and all sorts of things over the years. There is no reason why a Prime Minister giving an annual update on the Queen’s Speech progress could not set out the key terms of a Finance Bill. The Chancellor could fill in the details later.

I will move on to the spending review, which is also a hugely dysfunctional process—that is assuming it happens, which I will come to in a second. The spending review is essentially a strategy process for the Government, yet it is not led by No. 10 and the Prime Minister; it is led by the Chancellor and a finance Department that potentially micro-manages a wholly separate strategy from that of the Prime Minister of this country. Through this process, the Treasury has other Departments totally over a barrel. I think there would be less of a problem with how spending reviews are approached if the Treasury actually approached them effectively, but it does not. Right now, the UK has budgets set to 2020, which is next year. The country has no budgets in place for any of its spend after next year, which is wholly unacceptable.

Look at how this plays out on the ground. Last week I was up in Bradford to meet the opportunity area team, who are doing some absolutely fantastic work on the ground by connecting improvements in schools, businesses, the local authority and communities. This is a long-term—probably a decade-long—project to get structural change in a community that has bags of potential but needs its schools to do better and its businesses to connect with and develop the talent coming out of those schools. However, the team does not even have a budget after next year. How can we expect to get long-term change in our country, if budgets do not even extend beyond the next 12 months? It is entirely disconnected from the real world of how change happens on the ground. I have talked about opportunity areas, but it is writ large across virtually every single Government-delivered project that is happening on the ground to change things and improve lives.

The Treasury has just cancelled the spending review. From what I read in the papers, we will simply be rolling budgets forwards. At such a crucial time, I cannot think of a less strategic way to manage the UK’s public finances and invest in the future.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady is making a compelling point on longer budgets. Does she agree that short-term budgets cause huge uncertainty for the responsibilities of devolved Administrations, who rely on knowing when the Budget will come and what the spending will be?

[Justine Greening]

Indeed I do. Of course, not being able to plan ahead is a hugely inefficient way to manage resources. We spend efficiently when we can get long-term deals from suppliers and contractors, and when we can plan into the future. The inability of any of us to do this is absolutely an inefficient, sub-optimal way to manage finances. If we were to have the spending review, it would be a three-year spending review, but even a three-year or five-year spending review is not long term for a country. The companies that I spent 15 years working in did three-year to five-year spending reviews, but they were not Britain, which needs to invest for the long term.

How on earth are we going to invest long term in people and unlock social mobility if we will not even look beyond the next two or three years? If we will not even look beyond the next 12 months, it is absolutely impossible. This is a failing strategy, and a functioning department or ministry of finance should know that. The fact that the Treasury does not know that tells us everything about why it is not fit for purpose and should, as it stands today, be abolished.

The way in which that failing extends, operates and works on policy in practice—I speak as a former Secretary of State who ran three spending Departments—is that unless a departmental policy area is demonstrably and critically failing on the ground, the Treasury’s attitude is to turn a blind eye and hope that it all gets better. The Treasury’s technical explanation for this is that it hopes that that will drive efficiencies; that the system will have to work harder and deliver the same for less money. That might be true in some cases, but we are set up to fail because the Treasury has no way of understanding when that point has been long passed, and we do not have enough resources to deliver the Government’s plan—possibly the Prime Minister’s plan, but often it is the Chancellor’s plan.

Problems are not fixed early and are simply left. By the time the Treasury finally understands that it is a crisis, it is more expensive to fix it. Alongside a total lack of long-term planning, the Treasury does not fix problems early, which is hugely expensive. Departments’ spending—be it on prisons, schools, healthcare, local government or children’s and adults’ services—ends up in crisis, needing last-minute funding. That is a hugely expensive way to run the nation’s finances. Most importantly, it leads to real hardship on the ground, which is the exact opposite of what Governments of all colours try to achieve.

In my area of education, it was blindingly clear in early 2017 that, although the schools funding formula was broadly the right approach—levelling up schools that had traditionally been underfunded—more money needed to go through the formula, and the money should have come from the Treasury. That was clear to me from talking to colleagues and MPs in the House, and from talking and listening to teachers and parents, yet it was only after the election that we could take any action on that obvious problem. In fact, as everyone knows, I ended up doing my own mini-budget to release £1.3 billion to put into frontline funding. One might have expected that the Treasury would welcome a Secretary of State doing its job for it, but I had to haggle to get that agreement through the Treasury and be able to announce it. I fear that the Treasury yet again is making a similar mistake on school funding and repeating the process.

Reviews are another classic Treasury ruse. The recent Augar review managed to waste well over a year coming up with obvious conclusions about additional funding for further education, but no doubt the Treasury is delighted that it can kick the issue into the long grass for another 12 to 18 months. However, if the substance of the point is that FE needs additional funding, the Treasury has not done young people in the FE system any favours by turning its face away from the need to fund the system properly. It simply cannot be allowed to continue operating in this way.

I have talked about my experience of how the Treasury interacts with other Departments, but what about its policies? It should be managing the nation’s finances to maximise long-term value by unlocking the potential of its most crucial, precious resource—its people. It should set taxation and public investment policy to deliver that strategy for the long term. That is how to reduce the deficit sustainably. It needs to be a finance Department with policies to tackle weak access to opportunity.

For example, how do we recapitalise a generation of young people who do not have access to capital and therefore are not only disconnected from the fact that Britain is a capitalist society but cannot access opportunity? The Government and Parliament decided that they are willing to give young people access to capital if they want one kind of opportunity—a degree—but other opportunities are a wholly different matter. If young people want resources to move across the country to get the apprenticeship opportunity that they really want, to start a business, to put down a deposit on a house, or to rent a place somewhere where they can get on with their career, we do not capitalise them to do that. We should be doing that, and a functioning Treasury would look at those sorts of strategic measures to unlock a structural change in access to opportunity and social mobility in our country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) asked a good question about the leadership candidates. At the moment, we are hearing only simple, tactical taxation suggestions that, frankly, would not strategically or structurally shift the dial on social mobility.

[Nigel Huddleston]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Does she agree that enabling young people to reach their full potential is a core responsibility not only of the Treasury but of the Government? I suspect it is one of the key reasons why we got into politics in the first place. Will she join me in appealing to the Prime Minister, before she leaves office, to make a strategic and big move on education and education funding, which would ensure that the future leader, whoever it is, is obliged to deliver incremental, significant increases in funding for education in order to deliver on the key promise that she made when she first entered Downing Street three years ago?

[Justine Greening]

If the Conservative party is to be taken seriously as the party of opportunity, it is important that it has a clear, articulated and well-funded strategy on developing our nation’s talents, and of course that means investment in schools. One of the problems is that, because the Treasury does not have an approach on valuing human capital, it does not understand how to look at valuing investment in schools alongside investment in physical capital. It does not have any sense of how to invest in human capital, which is perhaps the most powerful form of capital, but it is all over how to value the long-term returns on physical capital infrastructure projects, such as High Speed 2. The reality is that it is the capacity and talent of the people who get on those trains, log on to the broadband, get on the tube—like my constituents—or get into the cars that go on those roads that will determine whether Britain is successful in the future.

A functioning Treasury would understand that that is how to maximise long-term tax receipts and the effectiveness of public investment, because of course improving lives is the best way to take the pressure off public spend, so much of which is invested in lives that have gone wrong. Instead, the Treasury effectively just manages cash flow year to year—I am a chartered accountant with 15 years of experience in business, so I am as qualified as anyone to comment on this. We see reports saying that tax receipts and growth have been a bit better, so the Chancellor has a bit more money in his pocket. That is cash flow management, not managing the nation’s books for the long term. It is the polar opposite of a long-term strategy.

The fiscal rules should be scrapped and reworked on the basis of debt and deficit, how we deliver and measure long-term value and whether policy measures are creating or destroying it. In Cabinet, I regularly pointed out to the Chancellor the Treasury’s inadequate approach to valuing investment in people. An example of that is that we spend literally hundreds of thousands of pounds on the children and young people who end up in alternative provision and out of mainstream school. About 6% of them come out of alternative provision with a credible, strong or standard score in GCSE maths and English. That is no sort of strategy. A functioning Treasury would insist that it be reworked to deliver not only better lives but a smarter approach to spending. Those are some of the most challenging and vulnerable young people in our country, and they are often dealt with by children’s services. Those are the kids who have had the toughest starts and often face the bleakest futures. There is an opportunity cost to them in the failure that lies ahead of them in their lives if we do not help them get on track, and to the public finances, too. I have met lots of those young people. I have been up to the Beacon of Light—a fantastic place in Sunderland that helps young people to get on track and works with local businesses to slot them into careers. It turns their lives around and gets them on track. That is transformational not just for them but for Britain’s long-term public finances. Those young people generate more tax, which contributes to our economy and our society. The spend on welfare, the justice system and health due to continued family breakdown is less.

As Secretary of State for Education, I had those discussions regularly with the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary and the Treasury. A Treasury sensibly managing public finances for the long-term would run towards a business case that would improve those lives, but it was like pulling teeth. If the Treasury continues to see spending on health, education and prisons only as a cost, it will always try to minimise it. Instead, it should see that spending as an investment that generates a return. Changing the way the Treasury works so that it looks at early intervention and fixing problems before they become bigger would deliver long-term, sustainable and optimised public finances.

The Treasury’s strategy on taxation and spending should be looked at through a very simple lens—does it deliver improved social mobility in our country or not? Every policy should have a clear test: does it level the playing field on opportunity in the short and long terms? If the answer is no, the Treasury ought to ask whether and why it is wise to put taxpayer money against that project.

I know that the Treasury has under way some Office for National Statistics work on valuing human capital—I am pleased about that—but it is about how that capital is accounted for, and I am afraid that the work just scratches the surface of the issues that I have raised. I am talking about far more than the ONS project. I am talking about a Treasury that, in its present form, is clearly incapable of doing the job that it needs to do to manage Britain’s public finances, unlock social mobility and, dare I say, reform itself, which it will not do to itself.

We should consider breaking up the Treasury, perhaps splitting it into a Ministry of Finance and an Economics Ministry, while merging the former with some elements of the Cabinet Office and having it report properly to the Prime Minister, so that it genuinely delivers a Prime Minister’s strategy for our country. This morning, I have not had much time to do anything more than scratch the surface, but if we really want Britain to be the first country to achieve equality of opportunity, a significant part of that solution starts right at the heart of Government, by fixing the dysfunctional Treasury.

Unless we grasp that nettle, we should not be surprised to get the same day-to-day cash flow management that prioritises political pet projects, sets No. 10 and No. 11 at loggerheads with each other, which is dysfunctional for the nation, and, in the end, achieves the exact opposite of what we all want—for our children, young people and communities to have equality of opportunity, access to opportunity on their doorstep and the chance to be the best version of themselves. That unlocks the chance for our country to be the best version of Britain, too.

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[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Robertson.

To my shock and surprise, I suppose, I agreed with an awful lot of what the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) said. It is just a shame that her Government have no intention of doing a lot of the things that she spoke about. There is no evidence that they will do any of those things, despite her best efforts. In many cases, indeed, what the Government have done to people across these islands is quite the opposite.

The right hon. Lady spoke about the Treasury running a separate policy to the Prime Minister and about the need for investment in the long-term rather than only year to year. I agree wholeheartedly with such things, which need to see change. Again, however, the Government seem intent on having reviews that go nowhere and on other delaying tactics, and not on investing in that long term. As I suggested in my intervention, that has a knock-on effect on the Scottish Government and their ability to do the things that they want to get on with and do.

Ongoing uncertainty about budgets, the wait or lag times between what the UK Government announce and their Budget, and then what the Scottish Government have to do with that money and the implications of the Barnett formula—whether things go up or down the UK—all determine what is left for the Scottish Government to spend. That adds to the unpredictability of the Scottish budget and the priorities within that, because the priorities of the Scottish Government are not necessarily anywhere near those of the UK Government, who set the budgets and determine how the money will flow. A huge amount therefore needs to change in how things are done in the UK. Unfortunately, however, I do not see things changing anytime soon.

The Social Mobility Commission’s “State of the Nation” reports provide a further damning indictment of the UK Government. The commission has found that social mobility has stagnated over the past four years at virtually all stages from birth to work. That is not a huge surprise to anyone, because poor social mobility has a close relationship with income inequality, an indicator that the UK has consistently failed to improve. The UK is the fifth most unequal county in Europe, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Income inequality as an issue is of course not exclusive to the UK. Global trends point to inherited wealth increasing faster than earned income. Sustained efforts are required to get rid of the sticky floor, which makes it incredibly difficult for people to climb out of poverty. The OECD estimates that it will take five generations for children in poverty in the UK to reach the average income—that is a sobering statistic—and gives no prospect of things changing soon.

I have raised some of the issues surrounding the tax system before in this place. The tax system in the UK is simply not fit to tackle big issues such as income inequality and social mobility. It is unwieldy, unnecessarily complex and full of holes to hide in. This UK Government have provided a catalogue of tax reliefs for those who are already wealthy. A report by the Tax Justice Network illustrates that well. It found that wealthy families substantially reduce inheritance tax obligations by invoking tax reliefs on the value of agricultural and business property. Last year, the combined cost of that particular tax relief was £930 million—equivalent to the cost of employing 23,000 NHS nurses. In fact, £930 million can buy a lot of things—it is nearly the cost of expected savings to Government of the universal credit two-child limit. It is extremely telling that this Government prioritise tax breaks for the very wealthy while simultaneously cutting support for children at the lowest end of the income scale—those who need it the very most.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was absolutely correct to point out the gender gap in social mobility, and the gap for black and minority ethnic communities. That is writ large in the statistics and in the people I see at my surgeries. He was correct that, when done right, tax credits are a great boost to many people and that those wishing to better themselves within the bizarre structure that the UK Government have put together have lost out.

In my own family, my Papa Thewliss studied, went to night school and did the best he could for his family. In essence, that is part of the reason why I am here today—my grandparents were willing to put that investment into their children, so that my parents could be the first in their families to go to university, and so I am here today. On Saturday, my gran turns 99, and it is some satisfaction that she sees what has happened in her family to get me here.

The structure has to be in place for such social mobility to happen, however. University has to be affordable and apprenticeships have to be supported and achievable. That is not always available for too many people. The points that the hon. Member for Strangford made about the accessibility of apprenticeships and other things, and that the right hon. Lady made about people being able to travel to reach those apprenticeships, are important. It is also important that apprentices can earn a real living wage, because the minimum that apprentices are entitled to is a pittance. We cannot expect people to put their lives on hold for the pittance of an apprenticeship wage. More support needs to be put into real living costs, because apprentices have bills to pay and families to support, and that needs to be part of the package.

The social contract has been ripped up for the people who need it most. Last month’s report by Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur, stated that austerity has decimated the lives of many people and actively pushed them into poverty. The UK Government have said that that kind of fiscal discipline is vital to reduce the deficit and build a strong economy, but that need for fiscal discipline evaporates completely when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy, spending billions of pounds on Brexit preparations or putting nuclear weapons on the Clyde.

It is not difficult to draw the conclusion that the cuts were never about reducing the deficit and are ideologically driven. We are seeing even more blatant rhetoric coming from the Tory leadership race, in which the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has promised a huge cut in income tax for the highest earners if he is elected. The Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde in my constituency has hinted at the impact that that will have on the Scottish budget. Because of the devolution of income tax, the tax cut would not apply in Scotland, but the resulting budget cuts would. To pay for it, national insurance would increase, which will have an impact because it is reserved—Scotland has no control over national insurance. We would lose out on the budget because of that policy, and national insurance contributions for people in Scotland would increase.

If I had the opportunity to give an extra £6,000 a year to one group of people, it would not be those earning over £80,000 a year. It would be some of the families rendered destitute by the hostile environment policy, for whom my office has to source school uniforms, food bank vouchers and Christmas presents, year in year out in some cases; or the women who are victims of domestic abuse, who have to declare that their third child was born as a result of rape just to put food on the table; or people with disabilities, who have to be hauled through a degrading and inhumane assessment system at the risk of being threatened with sanctions. Those are the people in society who desperately who need a break and to receive that £6,000. That is a choice that leadership candidates are putting forward as something they would bring in to Government if selected.

My colleagues on the SNP Benches and I have consistently called for devolution of all welfare powers, inheritance tax and other taxes, so that the Scottish Government can get on with the job of tackling income inequality. We have created the first Scottish income tax system, which is the fairest in the UK. The system has meant that 55% of Scots pay less tax, while raising £68 million for public services. The report I referred to by the Social Mobility Commission, which was so damning of the UK Government, congratulated the Scottish Government on the work they have been doing to increase social mobility. The report says that Scotland is going against the UK trend and becoming more socially mobile.

I urge the right hon. Member for Putney to look at what Scotland is doing in that regard. A person’s socio-economic status is now less likely to be determined by their parents’ socio-economic status. The likelihood of being in a professional job for those from a working-class background compared with those from a professional background has narrowed over the past four years, from 28 percentage points in 2014 to 23 percentage points. The Scottish Government have tried to tackle the issue of people from different socio-economic backgrounds getting into university. A huge amount of work has been done to switch that trend.

I give credit to businesses, as the right hon. Lady did, that are involved in that kind of initiative. I visited Zurich in my constituency, which is taking more people straight from school into the insurance sector. It recognises that having a degree is not necessarily what it needs in its business—it wants a rounded range of skills for a better business. It has found it hugely beneficial to bring people in from school.

[Justine Greening]

I am sure the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that Standard Life Aberdeen is also very much walking the walk, and genuinely making an impact that goes well beyond its employees and into the wider community.

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree that there are great examples of businesses right across Scotland—I could stand here all day talking about them. It is good that Standard Life Aberdeen is doing that and that more businesses recognise that including a degree on job adverts and applications is not necessary in many cases. By removing that and looking much more widely at the range of skills that people can offer, rather than what degree they do or do not have, social mobility will increase, so that is to be commended.

The Scottish Government are pursuing an inclusive growth agenda and view tackling inequality and growing the economy as two sides of the same coin. I am sure that the right hon. Lady would agree with that, given her speech. It is important to think about the type of society that we are creating with economic policies, and to consider what the point of growth is, if it is built on the backs of the most vulnerable. The Scottish Government have invested in decreasing child poverty, with an ambitious target to reduce it to 10% by 2030. They have introduced a legal requirement on public sector bodies aimed at reducing socio-economic disadvantage. Fundamentally, the Scottish Government oppose Brexit, which continues to threaten hard-fought steps towards reducing inequalities.

The right hon. Lady laid out the dysfunction of the British state in great detail. That is what we see from Scotland. Increasingly, people in Scotland do not believe that the British state will work for them. We have tried, we have waited and we have looked for changes, but they have not come. In fact, from the Scottish perspective we can only see things getting worse. We have asked for more powers, so that Scotland can try to tackle these things, but we do not yet have the full levers of powers that we would have as an independent nation in which we could tackle inequality head-on, using the full range of powers of an independent country. Time and again, the UK Government have abdicated their responsibility to the most vulnerable people. If they cannot do their job, they should allow Scotland the powers to do it instead.

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[Justine Greening]

It has been interesting to hear people respond to the stark points that I deliberately made. There is more consensus on how we ought to approach investment than some of the politics suggest.

There is a tension between the fact that we really ought to be investing over the lifecycle, but in the end the electoral cycle drags our view to a more short-term basis. If Government and democracy are there to deliver for people, then we have to start addressing these issues. That does not mean removing the choice of politicians; it means helping the public understand when short-term politicians are taking decisions that have long-term costs, which the public may not want to bear.

I represent the constituency with the youngest demographic in the country, alongside Battersea. The average age of a voter in Putney is 37 to 38. Many people in my community think change is too slow. They want to see a more sophisticated strategy than, dare I say, the one that the Opposition set out. If throwing money could buy us out of the problem of weak social mobility, then the previous Labour Government would have fixed it. Clearly, it is more complex than that. We need an improved framework for investment, fiscal rules that unlock social mobility and an approach to Government finance that supports smart, long-term strategies. I am talking about a political philosophy that is ultimately driven by a belief in people and their potential, but that has to translate into practical change on the ground.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).