Social Mobility and the Economy

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Davies: I will have to leave the debate a few minutes early to get a ticket for Prime Minister’s Question Time. I thank the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) for allowing us to debate this really important issue. I know how committed she was to social mobility when she was Secretary of State for Education.

The right hon. Lady knows that the roots of social mobility start far earlier than a place on work experience. They start from birth, primarily in the first 18 months of a child’s life. By the time a child gets to school, a poor child is 18 months behind its classmates. A poor child—let us call her Jo—is 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than a well-off peer. She is one of the 50% of children from low income families who do not reach the expected developmental milestones by age five. Because of her low progress by age seven, Jo has just a 50% chance of avoiding the bottom of attainment when she completes her GCSEs almost a decade later. That does not come as a surprise. Her secondary school is also more likely to be disadvantaged, with stark evidence that the top-performing comprehensives prove to be highly socially selective, with only 9.4% of pupils eligible for free school meals in the top-performing 500 comprehensive schools—let us not get started on selective schools—which is far lower than the 17.2% average.

When Jo tries to secure an invaluable internship, she cannot afford the £1,019 a month cost of its being unpaid, and she does not have the high-powered networks that could offer a golden ticket into a business. Meanwhile, Jo is trying to find a home.

Most Members, many from London and the south-east, know that at their advice surgery they will see hundreds of families terrified of losing their private rented accommodation and being placed in temporary accommodation. If someone lives in south-west London, temporary accommodation means Birmingham, Kent or Luton. How does a child continue to go to school if they live so far away in temporary accommodation? How do they have the confidence and security of being able to study if they never know where they and their mum will be able to live or how many brothers and sisters will be in the same bedroom? That is the reality for the many families that we see.

Although confidence and a personal contribution are paramount, we cannot ignore the social system in which many children and young people find themselves. It is not a level playing field, because they are far behind the starting line from the very moment of their birth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock]

Indeed. I agree with my hon. Friend. It is difficult to see exactly where the Scottish Tories are coming from on this—they are so confused.

For someone from a less affluent background who secures employment in a graduate entry-level job, that debt will stay with them for years. That is if they even manage to get what we once would have considered a graduate job. One in 20 graduates do not find any work at all, and the destinations of others is often less than optimal.

During the time that graduates carry that debt, they have less disposable income, their contribution to the economy is lessened, they find it more difficult to get on to the property ladder, decisions about starting a family are made more difficult, and their career decisions are limited. When they have children, that disadvantage is passed on, because they will not have advanced as far in life as they might have done if they did not have to carry that debt. It might be advisable for anyone who believes in improving social mobility to look at removing or alleviating that debt. Abolishing tuition fees would be a start.

To digress a little, I recommend that Members read the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s paper on migration and social mobility from 2005, which suggests that immigration encourages social mobility in the UK. That is on top of what we know already.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

If I could take the hon. Lady to my constituency, I would take her to homes where there is not a stick of furniture. In those homes are Tamil and African families, whose children are the doctors, lawyers and engineers of tomorrow. Social mobility is an issue of class and ethnicity. That is difficult for us to talk about, but in London we certainly need to talk about it.

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the hon. Lady for that interesting point about her constituency. We already know that immigration is a driver of the economy, and I would recommend a dose of extra immigration to any nation that wants to forge ahead.