Social Mobility Commission

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Statement. However, those words and the catalogue of claimed achievements are in stark contrast to what the outgoing chair of the Social Mobility Commission said yesterday, and indeed what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report said today. I am not making a partisan statement, because of course one of those resigning from the commission was the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, a former Conservative Secretary of State for Education. Reinforcing that is today’s editorial in the Times newspaper—not a source I normally quote, and usually a friend of Conservative Governments—which said of Theresa May that the resignations were,

“an embarrassing failure of both politics and policy … No wonder her social mobility commissioners have quit”.

When the commission was established in 2012, it was as the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and had nine members. Two years ago, the Government indicated that they regarded child poverty as having been ended, because they dropped that part of the commission’s title. They also took away its remit to advise Ministers. Meanwhile, the number of commissioners had dwindled to four.

How can the Government claim to have social mobility as an aim when, at this year’s general election, their manifesto contained a proposal to increase the number of grammar schools—the effect of which would have been the very antithesis of social mobility? Can the Minister tell noble Lords why the Government did not adopt a single recommendation of the Social Mobility Commission? Do the Government remain committed to the commission and, if so, why?