Social Mobility

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I am sure the world would be a very interesting place if you were the Prime Minister, Mr Crabb. To start our interesting debate this afternoon, I call Damian Hinds.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Hollobone, to see you in the Chair. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate on a subject that matters a great deal to many hon. Members—and, indeed, brought many hon. Members into politics, directly or indirectly.

There are many aspects to social mobility, and I am sure that hon. Members will pursue different angles. I want to focus on some of the material in the report of the all-party group on social mobility, “Seven Key Truths about Social Mobility”. We formed the group a year ago, and I thank the many hon. Members and outside organisations that have come to our sessions and contributed to the debate.

I also thank the group’s officers, particularly the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), who is detained in the Finance Bill Committee, and the noble Lady, Baroness Tyler. She is not taking part in this debate, for obvious reasons, but I am pleased to see that she is here. I also thank the Prince’s Trust, which provides great support to our group.

We did not seek to carry out primary research, or to espouse a load of opinions, but to synthesise the material, data, statistics and intelligence on social mobility. We always knew that, coming as we do from different political traditions, it was exceedingly unlikely that we would end up agreeing on policy prescriptions, but we thought we could agree on what we disagree on, to focus the debate.

Politicians sometimes know what needs to be done, but large challenges remain for implementation. However, sometimes they do not know what needs to be done, and no one does. I want to present some of those challenges. Unlike in other debates, I will not shout out a list of demands for the Government, or ask to know about this and that. In many cases that is more of an acknowledgement of the gaps that exist and where, as a society and a political system, we need to build up the approach.

Social mobility clearly matters, and from an economist’s perspective, it matters in terms of both equity and efficiency. To put that into better terminology, it matters for social justice and for economic growth. It is self-evident that every person should be able to achieve their potential and to become fulfilled, but from the economic growth perspective, national income maximisation requires the best deployment of resources. As a nation, we cannot afford to have talent going to waste and not providing all it can.

Studies suggest that reaching international benchmarks on social mobility could be worth around £150 billion per annum on national income, or the equivalent of a one-off increase in gross domestic product of 4%. Today, we are far away from those benchmarks. There are various studies comparing social mobility in Britain with other countries with liberal democracies and advanced economies. In those studies, we are near or very near the bottom of the list. What is worse and more depressing is that that has not improved. Today’s 40-somethings, such as me, have shown less mobility on average than today’s 50-somethings. In an advanced country such as ours, we would expect social mobility to be improving every year, even if it was difficult to catch up.

Social mobility is not one subject, but three, and we tried to bring that out in our report. If two people discuss social mobility, they may leave thinking that they had agreed, and that the other person was talking about the same thing, but it often turns out that they were talking about two completely different aspects. The three subjects are three degrees of intensity, or three types of challenge.

At one end is the “breaking out” category of people who are trapped in poverty or difficult circumstances for one reason or another, and need help to access mainstream society and opportunities. At the other end of the spectrum is the category, “stars to shine”, with outstanding talent that we must ensure fulfils its potential. In the middle is everyone else, and they are the ones who are often forgotten. They are the 60%, 70% or 80% of the population who are neither severely disadvantaged nor outstandingly talented, and they are the greatest number of people.

To bring those categories to life a little, I will explain how they interact with different policy issues. With early years and the moving on up category, which includes the vast majority of children, early-years settings and their quality, and general parenting programmes, are relevant. But to address the problems in the breaking out group requires a lot more action, starting with high-intensity parenting support programmes, and, in the most extreme cases, child protection.

During the school years of the breaking out group, children must be exposed to opportunities so that they have aspiration to fulfil their potential. Children in care have a particularly difficult time in the school system, and relatively poor levels of educational attainment. Talking about grammar schools to that group is supremely irrelevant, but for a relatively small group, grammar schools, selective education, assisted places and so on are relevant. Those children are in the stars to shine category.

That is the horizontal axis and those are the different degrees of challenge. On the vertical axis, we have seven key truths. Those are not my seven key truths, or those of the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles. They emerged from the expert witnesses we heard from. One may write one’s own list with a different emphasis, but we have run our list past quite a lot of people, and no one has said it is wrong, so we have some confidence that they really are seven key truths about social mobility.

First, the point of greatest leverage is what happens between the ages of 0 and 3, right at the start of life. That means primarily at home. Secondly, the cycle may be broken through education. Thirdly, the single most important controllable factor in education is the quality of teachers and teaching. Fourthly, what happens not just at school, but after the school bell rings—in the evenings and at weekends and in the holidays—is relevant.

Fifthly, university is the most important swing factor of achievements later in life. Pre-18 attainment dictates whether someone gets there, so pre-18 attainment is key. Sixthly, people should not give up, because it is possible to get back on the ladder and to go up it. Later pathways to mobility are possible as long as the will and the support are there. Seventhly, personal resilience and emotional well-being are the missing link in the chain, and permeate those different levels and life stages.

I believe that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles will talk about what happens after the school bell rings, and about opportunities later in life. I will talk briefly about the early years and what happens at school. I am a member of the Select Committee on Education, and it is remarkable that whenever one talks to people in education, they always blame the stage before—employers blame the colleges, universities blame the secondary schools, secondary schools blame the primary schools, and the primary schools blame the nursery schools. It is sometimes comic, because it can sometimes be predicted when that sentence will come into the conversation. However, there is an element of truth in it, which is why we said that the 0-3 life stage is the point of greatest leverage.

We have all seen the famous Leon Feinstein graph. It shows, if children’s cognitive ability is measured in the early years of life, that bright children from poor backgrounds are overtaken by less bright children from wealthy backgrounds and it is quite depressing. More recently, there has been an acceptance that that analysis has perhaps been a little over-egged and overused, but it is not totally invalidated. The central message remains: we must nurture and support families with children when they are at a very young age in order for them to reach their potential at primary school. I am talking about children being able to access the curriculum, to read and so on.

In that regard, we should welcome a number of things that the previous Government did and that the current Government have done or are doing. I am thinking of the Sure Start programme, the 12.5 hours of free care from the previous Government and, under the current Government, the keeping of the extension to 15 hours and, critically, the extension to disadvantaged two-year-olds.

However, there is something slightly depressing about all this. If we look at what I call “the Sure Start generation”, the millennium cohort—children born in 2000—we see that there has not been the narrowing of the gap between the rich and poor that, other things being equal, we would expect to see. That was one of the purposes of Sure Start in this country, as it was for the Head Start programme—a remarkably similar name—in the United States.

The standard explanation is that we are just not reaching the right families; we are not going to the places where the need is greatest. I praise certain Sure Start centres, which do outstanding outreach work, including, by the way, in my own constituency. I also welcome the current Government’s refocusing of efforts within Sure Start on the neediest families. However, it seems a little too neat to say that the gap has not narrowed only because we have not reached the places where the need is greatest. We must also consider what happens in early-years settings. The review of the early-years foundation stage is welcome, but we should not regard the job as done. We need to have a constant feedback loop of learning from what works best at all stages of education and care.

However, there is a bigger challenge yet, and that is the work force. Cathy Nutbrown’s recent report states:

“It must be a cause for concern that early years courses are often the easiest to enrol on and the courses that the students with the poorest academic records are sometimes steered towards.”

I will not argue that nursery care should be yet another “graduatised” profession, as some probably would, but we do have a work force challenge and one that it is too easy to duck or ignore. We are talking about the care of our children. We know that the countries least marred by social immobility tend to be those that have invested quite heavily in work force development at early-years level.

However, all that is comfort zone stuff compared with the really big challenge. Unless we are to accept that the age at which children go into a state care setting should get younger and younger and that the number of children doing that should get bigger and bigger, eventually we have to conclude that the point of greatest leverage—zero to three—happens mostly at home. That, of course, is painfully difficult territory for the state.

We know the things that make the difference: a healthy pregnancy, early attachment, a good diet, warm relationships, having books at home, being read to, spending time with the telly off and so on. We need to start by considering how to maximise the leverage from existing successful programmes. That involves health visitors, whose numbers are currently being expanded, but also programmes such as Bookstart and voluntary organisations such as Home Start and the great work that it does.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) may take part in the debate later and, if so, will probably talk about parent-infant partnership programmes, such as OXPIP, the Oxford Parent Infant Project, and NorPIP, the Northamptonshire Parent Infant Partnership, and some of the great work that they do on early attachment.

I welcome the support from the Government for expansion of the family-nurse partnership programme. That is a great evidence-based programme, although I think that there some concerns in the field that the family-nurse partnership is based on the American—and confusingly named—nurse-family partnership. The family-nurse partnership is almost the same as the nurse-family partnership, but not quite. We must ensure that when we have these evidence-based programmes, they are truly following the pure model. Again, as with early-years settings, we need a constant feedback loop of learning—a repository for the knowledge of what works with these programmes. That is why it is important to aspire to something along the lines of the early intervention foundation recommended by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen).

However, just finding successful programmes is not enough. Quite often, the most successful programmes are, sadly, also the most costly, and quite often we have local programmes that work well on a small scale but may not be scalable to cope with much greater case loads. Often, too, it is the third and fourth quintiles—the families who do not have advantages but do not have severe disadvantages either—that get insufficient attention. We need affordable mass programmes that can address and help very large numbers of families. The five a day for child development programme recently recommended by CentreForum is very interesting in that regard.

Although zero to three may be the point of greatest leverage, thankfully it is not the end of the story. At school, great differences can be made to social mobility, because although statistically we see a link between parents’ income and social class and children’s income and social class, it is not actually a direct link. The links are, first, between parents’ income and social class and children’s educational attainment, and secondly, between children’s educational attainment and their own eventual income and social class. If we can break that loop and get kids from poorer backgrounds and more difficult backgrounds achieving well at school, it is perfectly possible to have outstanding social mobility.

The pupil premium, a great innovation from the Government, is a very important step, but of course it does not give the answer, only space and opportunity for the answer. It is critical to know how schools, and the education system more widely, should spend money for maximum impact. Therefore, I welcome very much the work of the Education Endowment Foundation and the Government’s support for it, and the fact that Ofsted will in future be measuring how schools are using the funds. I also welcome the Sutton Trust toolkit of strategies for effective learning, which goes through in some detail individual programmes and initiatives that work in schools to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

Policy makers have to be brave and willing to take on and explode myths that for politicians are difficult to talk about—in particular, for example, on class size. There really is not any evidence that over the relevant range, reducing class sizes helps either average attainment or in terms of narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Obviously, it does at a certain point—when we are talking about 12 kids in a class—but not over the relevant range.

The single most important factor is not how many people the person at the front of the class has in their class, but who that person is; the issue is about teachers and teaching. We recently had a Select Committee inquiry. It was going to be called “What Makes a Great Teacher?” but obviously when the Committee got hold of it, we made the title much duller; it was something like “attracting, retaining, developing”—and something else—“teachers”.

What came up time and again was the importance of great teachers and great teaching. We know it when we see it. The problem is that it is very difficult to see it and know it before the teacher is already in the school and teaching. That is why one of our recommendations was to make auditioning for teaching much more prevalent before people take on teacher training.

We also said that it is too high stakes a profession in many ways. Once someone has made the commitment to do a postgraduate certification in education or a three or four-year BEd, they have basically committed themselves to following that career for life. That puts off some people, who would be outstanding teachers, from coming into the profession, but it probably also traps some people in the profession, once they have committed that time and money. In most other careers these days, people’s expectation is that they might do it for two years, five years or 10 years, but not necessarily for 30 years.

It is often said that no one forgets a great teacher, and that is true. Sadly, it is also true that most of us can also remember one or two pretty rubbish ones. As well as attracting the best teachers into teaching, we must take on the task of raising the average quality of the teachers who are already there. I repeat that most are outstanding, but we must look afresh at continuing professional development and at helping teachers with later-in-life career choices if teaching is ultimately not for them.

The individual child needs to be inspired to aspire, which is where careers advice becomes so important. It is worth saying that I did not hear many good things said about Connexions until there was talk of change, when suddenly it became the best thing ever invented. There has never been a golden age of careers advice in schools. Most people, whether they are 30, 40, 50 or 70, will relate the time when they were advised to become a florist, a caterer for the RAF or something very unlike what they ended up doing.

I do not know about other Members, but when I was 13 or 14, I did not know what I wanted to do—well, I thought I knew, but I was wrong about what I would end up doing; I have not totally given up on being a rock star though, so we will see how it goes. Often, the best advice is to keep your options open, so subject choice is an important consideration.

The English baccalaureate has its fans and critics, but it has clearly demonstrated that it can steer young people towards qualifications and subjects that keep their options most open. I remain concerned about A-levels in that regard. We have the list of the facilitating A-level subjects from the Russell group—the ones that it, to paraphrase, takes seriously in university admissions.

When I meet very bright young people in my constituency and elsewhere, I get depressed when I ask, “What subjects are you doing?” and they reply, “Physics, chemistry and law” or “Physics, chemistry and music technology” and so on. Too many young people are effectively self-selecting out of Russell group-type institutions, even though they clearly have the intelligence to be admitted. What, along E-bac lines, could be done about that at A-level?

University is the single biggest determinant in career progression in later life, and of course attainment is key to that. Much is made of the fact that although only 7% of kids attend private schools, they make up 17% of students at Russell group universities and 34% at Oxbridge. The figures are a tiny bit misleading, however, because that 7% refers to an average across all ages. If we take only the young people between the ages of 16 and 18 studying A-levels, the figure almost doubles to 13%. Of those who have passed three A-levels at grade C or above, it goes up further to 19%. For a subject combination such as maths, physics and chemistry, it is 27%.

If we ask what percentage of kids who get three As or A*s are at private school, I am afraid that the answer is 32%, which is knocking on the door of that 34% Oxbridge figure and well above the Russell group figure. There is clearly a big challenge. As part of that, and as only a part of it, we cannot dodge—as much as we, as politicians, might like to—the stars to shine question in secondary education on how we nurture outstanding talent.

The grammar schools debate is divisive. Many right hon. and hon. Members are former grammar school children, which is perhaps unsurprising given the numbers and the age profile in the House. What is more surprising is the number of people who say, “I was at a grammar school and I do not think that I would be here today had I not been”. The abolition of grammar schools was certainly well intentioned and something for which there has been consensus, implicit or explicit, across the House.

Grammar schools were better funded and in better buildings and so on than secondary moderns. There is concern that in doing away with that inequality, another inequality widened between the families who could afford to send their children to private schools and those who could not. In reality, it is not a binary question; academic tailoring is a continuum on which selection at 11 is one extreme and generic mixed-ability teaching is the other, but along the way is setting, streaming, enrichment programmes, specialisation at 14 and different types of GCSEs and so on.

When people say, “I’d like my children to go to a grammar school”, they really mean, and if you prompt them they will say, “I want my children to go to a grammar school, where the head teacher knows all the children’s names, where the teachers wear suits, and where if I walk along the corridor with a teacher and they see a piece of litter, they stoop to pick it up.”

Such things are replicable, but the tragedy is that in far too many schools we are not delivering. I would not want selection to come back to the town I live, for example; there are two outstanding secondary schools, and it would be divisive were one to be a secondary modern and the other a grammar. More widely, and particularly in a world where we have great and increasing diversity in educational provision, there could be a place, across a wider area and in every major conurbation, for an academically selective school alongside a school that specialised in sport or music and so on.

I am taking too long, so I shall accelerate and finish. We also wanted to talk in our report about the things that we do not know, and I will end on that point. We were pleased to mark down all the things that we could say, but it became abundantly clear that critical information is missing from the debate on social mobility, starting with information on innate ability.

With social mobility, we are clearly talking about equalising chances for young people and trying to hold everything else constant. It would be intellectually crazy to suggest that there was no innate ability—in other words, inherited intelligence. There is clearly some, but if we ask academics how much of a child’s ability is nature and how much is nurture—innate versus developed—they tend to say that it is somewhere between 25% and 75%. That is a huge range with which to deal, and although we will never have certainty, a little more direction on how much there is to go after would be useful.

We know that what happens out of school matters at least as much as what happens in school. When we push people to say what they would do in terms of out-of-school activities to equalise opportunities for poorer kids versus richer kids, however, they do not seem to know. They know that there are successful activities, but not quite what they are or, most importantly, how to make people do them. We frequently find that opportunities are made available in the most challenging areas, but the take-up is very small.

We are told repeatedly that non-academic skills, such as leadership, teamwork and customer empathy, are at least as important as academic achievement—the so-called non-cognitive skills. If we push people to name a non-cognitive skill and tell us how to develop it and what would be on the course, everybody dries up a little. It is a generic concept, so more clarity on what those skills are, and which ones we should develop and how, would be welcome indeed.

This vital issue has a great deal of focus and attention in the public sphere. I welcome the appointment of Alan Milburn to the new commission with Neil O’Brien as his deputy. It will give great focus and direction. I also welcome the close attention of the Government and Ministers and the involvement of the Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science. He is probably the one person who could possibly answer across the range of subject material.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the time for this debate. At that point, I will stop.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I will call Hazel Blears in a moment. After she has spoken, I will explain how the rest of the debate will proceed. The first speaker after Hazel Blears will be Mark Garnier.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be in Westminster Hall this afternoon with you, Mr Hollobone, as our Chair. I first thank the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for his tour de force on the interim report of the all-party group on social mobility. He illustrated not only the depth of his knowledge, but his personal commitment to and passion for the issue.

There are some issues in Parliament on which we take dramatically opposing views. We argue our corners and have some pretty intense disagreements. I am happy to say that that is not the case in the all-party group. That is an important point when we talk about social mobility, because social mobility matters to every Member of Parliament and every family in our constituencies. Yes, we will have different approaches and different policy prescriptions, but the absolute imperative is to ensure that we are utilising the skills, the talents, the passion and the commitment of everybody in our community, not just for their own personal fulfilment but for the competitiveness and the ability of our economy to thrive.

The hon. Member for East Hampshire has given us a really good overview of the subject, so I will concentrate on just a few of the issues. The all-party group discovered that opportunities outside school, such as those to widen networks, make connections and meet people that we would not normally meet, are key to raising ambition and aspiration, especially among young people; and that social mobility and the ability to get on does not stop at school, college or university. There is the opportunity for second chances and third chances. We must never write people off and say that that is all they can be. There is always the chance to get on later.

I want to talk about issues of personal resilience, confidence and self-esteem, which are often well taught in independent and private education establishments but not so well taught across the state system, yet they are key to people getting on. I pay tribute to our noble friend, Baroness Tyler, who has made a personal study of the subject and has done some excellent work. The whole area has not been particularly well explored, because it is less able to be analytically dissected and it is subject to a lot of anecdotal evidence. It is a rich seam for us to pursue.

Let me explain why I feel so passionate about this issue. We all come to this with our own particular stories. Just last week, I was contacted by a young man from my constituency. He has a degree and has written 300 letters to get a job. He has not had a single interview and he is absolutely desperate to know how to take the next step in his life. I think that it was the number 300 that rang so many bells for me and brought home so many memories. I left college with a law degree. I am not sure why I studied law, but I think that it was because both my parents had left school at 14. We did not have any professional people in our family. I went to do a law degree because I thought that was how people changed the world. As a lawyer, I rapidly discovered that I certainly could not change the world; I could only interpret the law. Then I realised that if I wanted to change the world, I would have to make the law, which is why I ended up in Parliament.

When I first graduated and I had done my Law Society examinations, I wrote precisely 300 letters to try to get an interview as a trainee solicitor. As a family, we knew absolutely nobody. My dad was a factory worker, and it was when his firm got taken over by a multinational that things changed. It was through his foreman, his foreman’s boss and his boss’s boss that I managed, unbelievably, to get an interview with the best law firm in Manchester, because it held the account for the multinational company.

I went for the interview; it was probably the most frightening experience of my life. It was far worse than a constituency selection meeting. I went to the top floor of a very grand office block in the city centre. I was met by the senior partner, so it was clear that this account was a serious matter to him in terms of his fee income. He was one of those elderly gentlemen who peer over half-moon glasses. He sat in a very high chair and we commenced the interview, which went incredibly well. Amazingly, we got on. We explored all the different parts of the law. I actually had some good commercial results in my various exams and he was interested in me. We got halfway through the interview and it felt like one of those moments in life when something really exciting is going to happen. My heart was pounding and I thought, “ I’m going to get this job. I have written 300 letters, I haven’t had a single interview and I am going to get this job.” I was overcome. He said to me, “Tell me, Miss Blears, this interview is going rather well, isn’t it? We are getting along fine, aren’t we? Just remind me what your father does in the company”. I said, “My father is a fitter and he works in the factory.” With that, he closed his leather folder, and said, “Good morning, Miss Blears, I think that I have heard enough.” He showed me the door.

That was one of those defining moments in life. I left the office, got into the lift and burst into tears—not for myself particularly, although I was upset. What he had done was insult my whole family, especially my father. He had exercised the power that he had, as a very senior professional individual, over a young, powerless person. If anything drove me into the arms of the Labour party, it was probably that experience. Many of us are shaped and formed by our experiences in that way. Luckily, I managed to get my articles and became a solicitor, eventually ending up in the British Cabinet, which is a strange journey.

That story explains why I feel so passionately about this issue. There are literally hundreds of thousands of young people in our communities who are full of talent, passion and ability, and because they do not know anybody, they cannot get a foot in the door. They cannot get on that first rung of the ladder. Once we give someone a chance, it is up to them after that; they will make what they are going to make of life. It is so unfair that even today, in this country and in many other countries, it is still who we know and not what we know. Government policy is nowhere near developed enough in this area because it is so difficult.

When Labour was in government and we were formulating the future jobs fund, one of the most stunning facts that came to me was that seven out of 10 people get their next job through somebody they know. That might not be the great professional job; it might be the plasterer’s job, the joiner’s job, a small company or a job with somebody in the community. Only one or two people get their next job through the jobcentre system, so why are we not spending more of our resource on expanding people’s networks, contacts and the number of people with whom they have relationships, because that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives? Instead, a functional and structured system often operates in jobcentres, which does not necessarily give people that richness of contacts.

In the days before we had iPhones and BlackBerrys, people often said that a filofax was worth as much to them as an undergraduate degree in terms of the progress that they would make in later life. It is very often those contacts that are made, particularly in the independent school sector, that can be called up because they may know somebody who knows somebody who can help. It may be one’s parents who can help or someone in the wider family. Yet so many people do not have those contacts.

Only 7% of people go to private school, but people from private schools account for more than a third of Members of Parliament, more than half of FTSE chief executives, half of our top journalists—and that is growing at an incredible rate—and still 70% of High Court judges, so we have a long way to go before we have more of a meritocracy and before we are utilising the skills and talents of our people.

If we look at what happens outside schools, we will find that very often there is top-up tutoring, especially in more affluent families, which gives people that head start in life. The six-week summer holiday for better-off families is often devoted to enrichment activities, sports, culture, art and drama. All those activities build the key skills around resilience, self-esteem and confidence. For children from poorer families, that six-week holiday is often a nightmare. Parents cannot find child care, which leaves children to their own devices day after day after day. It is a wasted period and there is a learning loss for those poorer children who find that they have fallen behind when they return to school in September. A much more attractive proposition is shorter terms and not such long holidays so that children can keep up with their learning.

On the later paths to mobility, we have heard some good evidence from employers—from Channel 4, which runs a talent programme for paid internships and from Wates Construction, which is offering work experience, apprenticeships and that next step to young people, often from very troubled backgrounds. We have more and more employers being prepared to take the risk, which is not inconsiderable for them, to take on ex-offenders and give them a chance at that first start in life. I have worked with Morrison’s supermarket in Salford. When the store was being set up, I said that I wanted 50% of the jobs for local people from this really tough estate. It said, “We can’t do 50%, Hazel.” I said that it simply had to, and we worked with the people incredibly closely. We managed to get 82% of the jobs in that store for the people from that estate, many of whom had never worked before, never had that chance and never believed that somebody would believe in them enough to give them an opportunity. I have no doubt that those people—particularly the young people—will have their life changed as they progress through to apprenticeships and hopefully to managerial positions in the future, but unless we had put in place a programme of pre-employment training, to get them to the point where they could actually turn up for an interview and present themselves properly, they would never have had that chance. There are great employers out there that are willing to give people a chance and willing to take a risk, and we need to do more to praise and highlight the really good employers in our country that are just as motivated as we politicians are on this agenda.

I absolutely welcome Alan Milburn’s appointment to the child poverty and social mobility commission; he will be a great force for good. I have ploughed through his first report, “Fair Access to Professional Careers”, which runs to several hundred pages. It is a very good report. I was particularly struck by his phrase that

“the glass ceiling has been scratched but not broken.”

I had a vision of all these hands pushing at that ceiling, and he is right that we really need to break through it. He highlights the fact that in the professions in which he has particularly taken an interest, such as law and medicine, we are still not making sufficient progress. He points out that 40% of law graduates are from the three highest socio-economic groups and only 14% are from the three lowest socio-economic groups, and that 48% of journalism students—I am not particularly on a crusade against the press in saying this—come from the highest socio-economic groups and only 14% from the three lowest socio-economic groups. In the days when becoming a journalist meant someone getting a job on the local paper and working their way up the system, those figures were very different indeed, and if we are creating a system where journalists and—I must say— politicians are increasingly coming from a narrow background, the political discourse and dialogue becomes an internal dialogue rather than one that engages the public.

I am pleased to say that law firms are doing their bit at the moment. As a former lawyer, I hope that my experience—the experience that I referred to earlier—is never repeated. There is also the PRIME initiative—the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise—as part of which 23 top law firms and the Sutton Trust have got together. The law firms have agreed that, for each training contract that they award over the next few years, they will put in place an equivalent work experience programme for somebody from a disadvantaged background, to try to get them up to the stage where they could realistically apply for a training programme. Many of the biggest law firms are absolutely focused on that programme, and I commend them for that.

As I say, I hope that nobody else experiences what I did, although I must say that when I was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government I managed to go back to the particular law firm in question to do an event for it. The senior partner who had interviewed me had long retired, but the current senior partner was mortified when I told him my story. It was a great experience.

I want to say something about politics, because there is a problem in journalism but there is a big, big problem in politics, and we have a responsibility to try to lead on this issue. I have been particularly exercised by the increasing number of politicians who are coming into this place from what I have called a transmission belt: they work in Parliament for an MP; they become a special adviser; they are parachuted into a relatively safe seat at fairly short notice; and then they are fast-tracked into ministerial office and the Cabinet. I made a speech about this subject when I was in the Cabinet myself; I was not exactly the most popular person the next morning, as people can imagine. I said that I thought that process was bad for democracy, bad for policy making and bad for governance of the country. If everybody comes from the same background there is groupthink, and there needs to be challenge in policy making as well.

In 1979, just 3% of MPs said that they came from a political adviser-type background. According to House of Commons figures, by the last election that had risen to nearly 15%, and the Smith Institute’s latest research says that the figure is 25%. A quarter of all our MPs have come through the route that I have described and I believe that we are now creating a political elite, which makes the problem of people’s disaffection with politics ever more acute.

The Hansard Society has found that 30% of people feel completely ignored by decision makers and that 85% of people feel they have no influence over national decisions. In addition, the Speaker’s Conference found that people increasingly feel that MPs do not talk like them, do not look like them and have little connection with them.

There is something practical that we can do. For the last year, I have been working with colleagues from different parties—the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), from the Liberal Democrats, and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), from the Conservative party—and with the Speaker, to set up the Speaker’s parliamentary placements scheme. We have raised a considerable amount of money from very good companies and our first 10 people started on the scheme last year; they are just about to graduate from it now. It has been inspiring to see people coming from completely different backgrounds into Parliament. They work four days a week with an MP. On a Friday, they take part in a fantastic programme put on by the House of Commons Commission, which is about how a Bill goes through Parliament, how to do research and statistics, personal development, public speaking and going out and taking visitors around the House of Commons. It has been amazing.

The people on that scheme include James, who was an unemployed joiner in Glasgow. He could not get a job, but he was passionate about his politics. He spent 10 months with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. We have also had Matthew, a young man from Northern Ireland, who is a passionate Conservative. He spent time here and—fingers crossed—I think that he is about to get a full-time job with an MP, and if so his life will be very different in the future.

We are just about to open our recruitment for the second year of the scheme. So, if there is anybody out there who reads Hansard and thinks they would like to come into Parliament from a very different background to others, bringing something to our life here that helps to leaven the mix of people who might think about going into politics, I urge them to get in touch with the Social Mobility Foundation, which runs the scheme on our behalf. Equally, I say to MPs that if they are interested in taking one of these young people into their office and giving them the chance to see that politics really makes a difference, that is something practical that we can do about improving social mobility.

As I say, the Speaker’s scheme has been amazing. I did not think that it would actually get off the ground, but I hope that we now have some sustainability for the future. I am delighted to say that after I challenged the Deputy Prime Minister in our debate on his social mobility strategy—in which he mentioned our scheme without actually having given any money to it—he has now decided to commission a few places for people from low-income backgrounds who also have particular disabilities, and who therefore would perhaps find it doubly difficult to come and work here in Parliament. We are delighted to ensure that we can attract people to come along. That is the first bit of Government investment and I hope that we will see more of it in the future.

That is our national scheme. I just want to mention briefly one thing that I am doing in my local area. Like most MPs, I think that if we talk about national politics it is incumbent upon us to try to ensure that we do something practical—something that works—at a local level too. In Salford, we have set up a scheme called Kids without Connections, because I am getting so many young people now, such as the young man who wrote to me and said that he had applied for 300 jobs, who come to me and say, “You’re my last resort, Hazel. What can I do?” Like most MPs, I have very good contacts with the employers in my constituency: in construction; in retail; in hospitality; in catering; and in the public sector. We have now had a big event with all of our employers. We have 70 employers registered that are all prepared to give work experience to young people in my constituency, so that those young people can do two, three or perhaps four weeks of work experience over the summer. I have 150 young people who have volunteered. We are now doing what I suppose is the “speed dating”, which is matching the employers and the young people. We already have had a dozen jobs being offered—not just work experience placements, but a dozen real jobs—as a result of the programme. When the young people have done their work experience, the employers and the young people will come to Parliament for a reception, to celebrate their working together and to get an experience of Parliament.

That scheme is a very simple one and if anyone else is interested in the practicalities of making such a scheme happen, I must say that at least it gives the young people involved a taste of work and what it is like to be in an employment environment. Once again, it ensures that they will not simply settle and accept that their life will never be any different. That is something practical that we can do, and I pay tribute to Charlotte Chinn, who has been amazing in helping to make that scheme happen in my constituency. Supporting it is one of the most inspiring things that I do.

The final practical thing that I want to do is to mention an organisation called Future First; some Members might know about it already. It is relatively new, having been going now for a couple of years. What it tries to do is to set up—a very complicated phrase—“alumni networks for state schools”. In the private education sector, alumni networks are automatic. Current students at a school know the students who were there before them. Former students raise money, act as mentors or role models, come in and share their experiences at the school and consequently they enrich the school’s curriculum. That has never happened in state schools. But for the last couple of years, Future First has been organising programmes across London and they now want to expand across the country. What those programmes do is to track former pupils—using Facebook or Friends Reunited—to see whether they would be willing to come back into their former school, to share their experiences with the current students and act as role models. Amazingly, 30% of former pupils have said that they would love to do that. That is a potential resource of up to 10 million people in this country who would come back and be role models for state school students in the future.

I was struck by what one of the students said:

“In private schools, they’re told that they can conquer the world, they’re given motivation, they’re told they can win. We’re not told that in state schools so it’s harder for us”.

That is absolutely what it is like. Luckily, when I was growing up, my mum said, “You work hard: the world’s your oyster. You can be anything. You can do anything in the world.” If people do not have that push behind them from home, and do not get it in the school they attend, it is much more difficult to have the ambition and aspiration that will take them on their journey. The work that Future First does is incredibly valuable, and we have a huge untapped resource that we could draw on, to make the situation very different. As ever, we have a problem, but I like to think of practical solutions that we can bring to bear. I am sure that the Minister will be in the same place. It is important to have some programmes to point to that are making a difference, and try to scale them up.

I have been lucky in my life. I have met people at important points, who have guided me and shaped my life. They have encouraged me to do different things. For that I am incredibly grateful. Some of them were inspirational teachers who made a connection with their students and gave them a broader outlook on life. Some were people I met at work, and some were friends and family. I worry enormously, however, that many young people do not have that in their lives, and that their talents go to waste. I do not think we can allow that.

I have a couple of questions to which I would like the Minister’s response. First, what action is he taking to widen the networks of people from the poorest backgrounds? If we have any money to spend—and I know it is tight—I want it to be spent in a way that gets results, rather than on sustaining a system that does not really achieve.

I am very concerned about the advertising of unpaid internships. I do not mean four or six weeks’ work experience, but full-time jobs, where people are expected to turn up and do a series of proper tasks, and take on responsibilities, but get no pay. That is illegal in this country, and people with such jobs must be paid the minimum wage. Yet it is still lawful to advertise those unpaid, full-time, long term internships. That is a mismatch. If something is unlawful it should not be lawful to advertise it. I should like to hear the Minister’s response. Will he support more robust enforcement with respect to unlawful, unpaid internships, so that employers must pay the national minimum wage as they should?

Will he also support the establishment of alumni networks? I know that some money has been granted from the Cabinet Office social action fund, which is welcome, but it would be a practical and cheap way of making a difference.

Finally, will the Minister recognise some of the great employers that I have met in the past year, primarily through the Speaker’s placement scheme? The people who help and support us include Morrison’s supermarkets, Prudential, AXA, Aviva, the Royal Mail and Clifford Chance—every spectrum of corporate life. They are just as passionate about what we are doing as we are, and they make a difference. We should thank them and encourage others to take part too.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank the debate’s two sponsors for opening the batting. I thought it might be helpful if I ran through how the debate will proceed. It must close at 5.30. The Opposition spokesman, Shabana Mahmood, will be called no later than 4.55, to speak for 15 minutes. The Minister will be called no later than 5.15, to speak for 15 minutes, and then Damian Hinds has two minutes to wind up.

Between now and the speech of Shabana Mahmood, there are seven hon. Members who have said they want to speak. That would give each of them 12 to 13 minutes. The running order will be Mark Garnier, Meg Hillier, Mark Pawsey, Mike Crockart, Jackie Doyle-Price, Kelvin Hopkins and Martin Vickers.

That may all change at 4 o’clock when the Chair changes, but until then that is going to be the order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Garnier]

Absolutely. On the qualitative side, the question, “If I spend £125 on a pair of football boots, will I be able to play like David Beckham?” needs to be taught elsewhere, in personal, social, health and economic education, and in the wider curriculum. I discovered, to my cost, that the answer is no.

As time progresses, and we talk more about the subject, I am increasingly convinced that financial education needs to be not only included in the curriculum, but tested. Teachers who have huge pressures on their time naturally tend towards subjects in which there is testing, so if we do not test financial literacy there is a fear that it will not be put into the curriculum.

What we are trying to achieve is not just people being able to work out their bank and credit card balances. I want my constituents and all the people of this country to be able to work out problems such as that of a hypothetical individual who loses their job and lives in a rural community with £5,000 redundancy money to their name. I want people to be able to make the crucial decision about that individual’s future. Should they blow the money on a cheer-me-up holiday of a lifetime, or should they buy a car to seek work further afield? Should they use the money to retrain for something different, or should they invest it in a new business that they own and can drive forward, thus taking control of their own life?

The absolutely crucial engine to social mobility has to lie in financial literacy. That is why I will continue to urge the Government to put financial education on to the curriculum, and to test it.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

There has been a change to the running order, due to a late entry. It will now be: Meg Hillier, Mark Pawsey, Virendra Sharma, Mike Crockart, Jackie Doyle-Price, Kelvin Hopkins and Martin Vickers. But do not worry; you have an average of 11 minutes each.