Social Mobility

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, these two reports have pointed all their recommendations, almost without exception, at government. However, government is not the only body responsible for promoting social equality and growth.

Two bodies in particular spring to mind. The first is the importance of the teaching profession taking a positive attitude towards young people’s aspirations to get into our top universities and not saying, “This is not for you; it’s not for people from your background or region.” I believe that teaching’s professional bodies—teachers’ trade unions, teacher training colleges and others—must be much more positive in their attitude to promoting aspiration in young people. That is not in government’s hands. The right reverend Prelate I think mentioned the only example of that, from Durham.

Secondly, the Civil Service is often criticised for being one of the last bastions of Oxbridge—or, as I prefer to call it, Camford—privilege. The upper mandarinate is littered with people from Oxford and Cambridge. But it is not government’s job, and government should not be involved, in deciding who is to be employed in the Civil Service. It has traditionally been independent and has had independent advice. The Civil Service promotes and recruits its own. There is unfortunately no one from the upper mandarinate of the Civil Service on these Benches to hear my strictures this afternoon, but it is clearly a failure on the part of the Civil Service itself not to have developed young people at greater pace who come from backgrounds other than the traditional backgrounds that are pointed out in statistics in these two reports.

Lastly, I am an admirer of the work that is being done in your Lordships’ House by the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Clerk Assistant in promoting diversity among those we recruit to your Lordships’ House to help us.