Social Mobility Commission Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Neil Gray
Main Page: Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts)Department Debates - View all Neil Gray's debates with the Department for Education
(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Goodwill
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is no limit on the number of people on the board; indeed, I think it had almost 10 at one time. I hope that the publicity surrounding this question may encourage people to apply to be on the board, because we want a wide cross-section of applications, including perhaps somebody who has not necessarily been in political life but has been involved at the cutting edge in delivering better social mobility solutions.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The board members have clearly become exasperated by the UK Government’s failure to acknowledge and act on their work on lifting people out of poverty. Does the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report today not highlight and emphasise that?
Mr Goodwill
The Joseph Rowntree report on relative poverty will always reflect changes—for example, in levels of pensions and levels of employment. If we see higher employment or higher levels of pensions, then an unfortunate side effect will be that relative poverty will increase. As I have said, there are now over 300,000 fewer people in absolute poverty, and that is the figure that is more important to them in their everyday lives as they are shopping for Christmas.