Social Mobility and the Economy

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Justine Greening]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are three elements to that. First, it is great that the educational attainment gap is steadily closing, but it needs to happen faster. Secondly, businesses can play a role in lifting the aspirations of young people while they are in our education systems, starting from the earliest age in primary school, which is part of what the social mobility pledge asks companies to come forward and do. Thirdly, we must ensure that businesses continue to nurture and develop young people’s talent once they enter the world of work, and that they have a level playing field when they seek to progress their career after leaving the education system.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

This is an important debate and having a former Secretary of State for Education here is a real treat for us. At the moment, the Government fund young people who go to university to the tune of about £10,500. For people who go to a further education college, the funding is about half that. For young people who get an apprenticeship, it is about £1,500 on average. For people who fall off the cliff altogether, there is very little money and it is a confused landscape, unless they end up in the criminal justice system, in which case we spend a fortune on them. Does the right hon. Lady believe that it is time the money followed the young person rather than the institution?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. The T-levels reform will help to ensure that the route a young person follows, whether they are interested in a more academic route and university, or want a more vocational, technical route, will be every bit as high quality as any other. Towards the end of my comments, I will briefly talk about how Government reform could enable that to happen more easily.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies.

May I say how grateful we all are that my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) secured this debate? She has done so on the back of an outstanding record in government, including at the highest level. She brings to our debates a burning strength within her as to the importance of social mobility.

During this debate a number of Members have referred to their backgrounds, which have informed in many ways the views they have reached on social mobility and their desire to do something about it. My parents left school at the ages of 15 and 14 because of economic hardship, and the thought of them ever having become a doctor or a scientist, or even having gone to university, is about as fanciful as any one of us stepping on the surface of the moon. It would have been entirely and utterly impossible. My great break in life was when I got a free place at the grammar school, and I took that opportunity and never looked back. I therefore share with many of those present the burning drive to do something about the issues that we have discussed.

We can all agree that far. The question is, how do we approach these issues? As has been evident in the debate, many different strands are involved. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) mentioned housing, for example, which is one component. There are of course many other components, but I will focus on a couple of key areas, if I may, because they relate to the worthy and outstanding initiative launched today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney: educational skills, and the economy and business.

We should not overlook the progress we have made, in particular on education and skills, some of it on my right hon. Friend’s watch. We now have 1.9 million more children in good and outstanding schools than we had in 2010, and a record number of young people in education and training. We have more disabled and disadvantaged young people going to university than at any time in our history. We have driven up standards right across the piece. There is no point in getting people into education and training unless we give them good education and training that will be useful to get them work in future. We are achieving that: the EBacc is driving up standards and we have opened up access, particularly in the case of our great universities.

We recognise that we need to do more, so we recently invested £72 million in the 12 opportunity areas across the country, with £50 million allocated to early language and literature skills and £250 million to technical education. We have delivered £406 million for education and skills within the industrial strategy, particularly focusing on maths, digital skills and technology. My right hon. Friend mentioned apprenticeships and T-levels; there have been 3 million new apprenticeship starts since 2010 and 1.2 million since 2005.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) mentioned the importance of not writing people off early in their career and the idea of lifelong learning. We are launching our national retraining scheme to ensure that we have upskilling at the centre of our offer. He mentioned the economy, and there is no doubt that providing a strong economy and employment is the best way to get people moving up in society and, in particular, avoiding poverty.

[Peter Kyle]

There are a lot of things I would like to comment on, but the Minister mentions the economy; is it not true that we live in a world where if someone is born into a family that has assets, they are almost certain to succeed in life, but if they are talent-rich but asset-poor they are not? What will the Minister do to restructure the economy so that those born into families who do not own property and do not have savings have a much better chance of success?