Social Mobility

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord McFall for tabling this Question for Short Debate. It has enabled an excellent opportunity for us to discuss this important subject.

The 2013 report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is, in part, sombre and depressing reading. Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, and becoming richer, we have struggled to become fairer. As my noble friend Lord McFall pointed out, the UK is now ranked 28th out of 34 countries in the OECD equality table.

In this short debate it will not be possible to make all the points and put all the questions to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that I wish to. However, I have a few points to make and a few questions. I do not expect to get all the answers today but I would like a commitment from the Minister to write to me after the debate and place a copy of the letter in the Library of the House.

The figures on child poverty are there for us all to see. By making a real effort to tackle the causes of child poverty, we could create a tangible boost to the economy by as much as twice the cost that we are paying for child poverty today. The achievement of lower child poverty and higher social mobility comes back to universal affordable child care, higher quality jobs, fair access to higher education, work incentives that encourage employment and tackling income inequality. There is plenty of evidence out there that if we were fairer as a nation we would all be better off.

I support initiatives such as breakfast clubs and universal free school meals to help children. They would ensure that children had a hot meal inside them and were able to learn better. I commend the report of the inquiry by the London Assembly, chaired by my friend, Fiona Twycross AM. The report is entitled A Zero Hunger City and has the backing of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. It makes many recommendations, including working with partners to establish sustainable breakfast clubs in London; lobbying the Government to agree with the London Food Board to identify models for providing universal free school meals for all schoolchildren; monitoring risk factors for food poverty, including welfare reform; school plans to identify and address hunger throughout the school day; and support for families in food poverty.

The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, made some excellent points about resilience and people working to achieve their goals despite what life throws at them. I agree with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, when he spoke about growing up and being lucky. I am a little younger than the noble Lord but we also did not have a great deal of money and my parents had to have second jobs to pay the bills and make ends meet. They arrived in this country in the 1950s as immigrants from Ireland. However, I lived in a stable family on a safe council estate in Southwark. I was always encouraged and supported and I am lucky to have had that.

I have always been of the opinion that going to work was good for people. We must have in place measures to make work pay and to deal with low pay. It is most regrettable that the UK remains at the wrong end of the international league table on wages, with more than one in five full-time workers classified as low-paid. Those most at risk of being low-paid are young, female, low-skilled workers in temporary or part-time work, often in the hospitality, retail or care sectors. Given this and the imbalance in the growth of the economy, things can be very tough in some parts of the regions and nations of this country. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, also made a point about his visit to Leicester. That reminded me of a conversation that I had with my noble friend Lord Donoughue, who told me that he had gone back to where he had grown up and met people who had not worked in three generations. That is something that we have to address; that cannot be right.

Many times in the Grand Committee and in the Chamber of the House of Lords we have talked about reducing the deficit. There is no arguing about that—we have to reduce it. However, it is unfair for the lowest earning fifth of households to make a larger contribution than any other group than the top 20%, both as a proportion as their incomes and in absolute terms, with low-income families, and especially lone parents, losing out by more than their peers as a proportion of their net income. The fact is that we are a divided country; there are haves and have-nots. Because we are not fairer, we all lose out and, in particular, some people never get the chance to develop, let alone to realise their true potential.

Have the Government looked at the London Assembly report, A Zero Hunger City? What did they think of it—and, if they have not looked at it, will they look at it? In reducing the deficit, as we come to the last part of this Parliament, what are they going to do to make the debt reduction programme fairer for all? It appears likely at present that the Government will not meet their 2020 targets on child poverty. What is the plan to get that back on track? What are we going to do to make work pay in more cases than at present, and what examples are the Government setting on making work pay? Is the living wage the answer? What government departments and agencies pay the living wage, and do the companies that they contract do so? What do they say to business about making work pay for employees? He may not reply to all those points today, but if he could write to me I would appreciate it. I thank my noble friend for this debate.