Social Mobility

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, we all like a good example of a socially mobile person because we are always looking for the exception that proves the rule. Unfortunately, the socially immobile have normally failed at school. I am one of those persons; I relied on the prison system to get my education, but you cannot rely on that system any more to give you your education. You cannot rely on being wrong at some stage in your life, then somebody coming along, putting you together and moving you on so that you end up in the House of Lords. That does not happen.

I am an ambassador for a very grown-up thing to do: taking the social mobility pledge. Four hundred businesses have pledged to use social mobility and to be fair in how they take people on at work. That represents 3 million workers in the United Kingdom. We should have more businesses doing that. Unfortunately, if we fail 35% of our children at school and they make up 90% of our prison population—and if they make up the people stuck in our hospital A&Es—we are going to have social immobility. We really have to look at what our education system is doing because it is not providing the opportunity. What is happening is that people like me are now going in bad and coming out worse.