Social Mobility (Wales)

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Justin Madders

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) on securing this debate and on the considered way that he introduced it.

As chair of the all-party group on social mobility and a Member who represents a constituency that has not only a border but many economic, cultural and political links with Wales, I have two reasons for participating in the debate. As we all know, it does not matter whether someone lives in Bangor, Buckley or Birkenhead; in too many parts of this country, their place of birth can override their ability and potential, and generation after generation struggles against entrenched disadvantage that should put us all to shame. We have mistakenly and unquestioningly accepted the myth that greater economic growth leads to increased opportunity for all, despite overwhelming evidence that tells us otherwise.

Earlier this year, my APPG published a report entitled “Increasing access to the leading professions”. It looked at opportunities in law, finance, the arts, media, medicine, the civil service and politics, and found that, whatever the profession, there is a similar lack of opportunity and similar reasons for that. Privilege and opportunity go hand in hand across the board. For example, Sutton Trust research shows that three quarters of senior judges, more than half the top 100 news journalists and more than two thirds of British Oscar winners attended private schools.

The APPG recommended that there should be a legal ban on unpaid internships lasting more than a month. We found that their unpaid nature was not the only barrier: many of those placements are in London, which means that unless someone is from that area and has parents who can support them for an extended period, there is no prospect of them being able even to consider such an internship.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the excellent Speaker’s internship scheme should consider providing means for people to afford accommodation in London, so that we can reach out to people who could not otherwise gain from such paid experiences?

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. We took evidence from several successful applicants to the Speaker’s internship scheme. The geographical challenges were certainly very apparent, and that ought to be fed back.

How can anyone from outside London—from the north-west of England, Wales or anywhere else in the UK—go and do unpaid placements in London for months on end? There also need to be fair, transparent and open recruitment processes for such placements, which we found are often determined by existing connections, be they family or business contacts. The same rigour needs to be applied to those placements as would be applied if they were permanent jobs, otherwise we may just ease the path for people who are already on it.

One simple change could make a big difference to improving social mobility. There is a private Member’s Bill in the other place that seeks to end unpaid work placements. However, given what we have seen so far in terms of Government action, that does not seem easy to deliver in practice. Although I understand that responsibility for social mobility rests primarily with the Department for Education, any action on unpaid internships must be taken by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. There has of course been no action, which proves Alan Milburn’s recent point that commitment to social mobility does not spread out across the whole of the Government. It needs to. Yes, it is to do with early years, schools and universities, but it also involves the world of work, housing and health. The Social Mobility Commission provided us with a wholesale national analysis of all those issues, but the Government’s response is too often constrained by Departments’ silo mentality, which is sometimes exacerbated by devolved responsibilities getting in the way.

I am sure that if I asked a group of young people from many of the constituencies represented in the Chamber what they wanted to do when they are older, they would not say they wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer or an actor. For too many young people, the very notion that they should even consider such careers is almost universally absent. They need role models, mentors and inspirers—people from their communities who have been there and done it. We need to inspire young people from an early age to aim for wherever their abilities and interests take them. We should not accept that coming from the wrong part of town means low horizons. Getting a job should mean following dreams and forging a career, not simply working to survive.

In keeping with the Welsh theme, we were fortunate to have Michael Sheen give evidence to the APPG. There is no doubt that he is an inspirer and mentor for the kids of Port Talbot. We are not going to get a Michael Sheen in every constituency, but I hope there will be others in every other town who will provide similar inspiration.

Mentorship and inspiration are important, but without academic equality they will not be sufficient. The Sutton Trust report, “Global Gaps”, looks at attainment gaps across 38 OECD countries and as a result can pinpoint how each of the devolved Administrations is performing. Unfortunately, it showed Wales performing rather poorly compared with other industrialised nations, in particular in reading and mathematics, where the skills of the most able pupils are some way behind those of pupils in comparable nations. On a more positive note, it did say that the gap between the most able, advantaged and disadvantaged pupils in Wales was relatively small compared to other industrialised nations. However, sadly, the report concludes that the situation for high-achieving pupils across the whole of the UK is “stagnant at best”.

Stagnation is a good description of where we are now. I urge all Members, if they have not already done so, to read the Social Mobility Commission’s latest “State of the Nation” report, which paints a bleak picture of a deeply divided nation in which too many people are trapped in geographical areas or occupations with little hope of advancement or progression. It talks about an “us and them” society, in which millions feel left behind. Specifically, the report talks about major changes to the labour market in recent decades, which have imprisoned 5 million workers in a low-pay trap from which there appears to be no escape. The report highlights places that offer good prospects for income progression and those that do not, showing that real social mobility is in fact a postcode lottery, with the worst problems concentrated in remote rural or coastal areas and former industrial areas—that description will be familiar to Members in the Chamber today—not only in Wales but in England.

Encouragingly, the report finds that well-targeted local policies and initiatives adopted by local authorities and employers can buck the trend and positively influence outcomes for disadvantaged residents. In short, where there is a will and strong leadership, things can be done.

This country is too closed. It is a country where too often people’s life chances are defined by where they are born and who they are born to. We are now in a world where many parents believe their children will have less opportunity than they did, and I deeply regret that. Automation and artificial intelligence will only exacerbate the problem, and we are miles away from even beginning to understand the social impact that will have. The only way we will be able to meet those challenges in the future is by intensive, long-term Government intervention, not just at the ages of five or 15, but at 35 and 50 and so on. The world of work will change more rapidly than ever before, and we need to recognise that opportunity will need to be addressed not just in our younger years, vital though that is, but throughout our lives. We have to invest in ourselves through all of our working lives, but we cannot do that without Government support.

We have heard about the geographical divide, and the APPG is looking at that, but there is also a generational divide. I do not believe that the recent election was a ringing endorsement of the status quo. What we saw was that the more young people engaged with the question of what they want from their 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? Yes, there are opportunities, but they come with eye-watering debt that may never be paid off. Want to own a home? Unless the bank of mum and dad is there to fall back on, there could be a very long wait. Want to build a career in a profession doing something rewarding financially and intellectually? Those opportunities exist for the few, not the many.

The more likely experience for our young people in the job market is casual work, low pay and chronic insecurity. It is time we offered them hope. Across the years, across the Government and across the nations, we need total commitment to delivering opportunity for all.