What became glaring to us through our report on “The Seven Key Truths of Social Mobility” published last year was the importance of so-called “soft skills”, an area all too often neglected in the social mobility debate. To shine a spotlight on this neglected area we held a Character and Resilience Summit yesterday in Admiralty House involving practitioners, academics and opinion formers from the worlds of education, employment, politics and the voluntary sector, as well as young people themselves who have to had to cope with personal adversity. The aim was to share ideas and new approaches to developing resilience and character in young people as a way of narrowing the life chance gap.

“Soft skills” seems to me something of a misnomer because these aren’t fluffy or cosmetic skills we’re talking about – this is about having the fundamental drive, tenacity and perseverance needed to make the most of opportunities and to succeed – whatever obstacles life puts in your way. The Summit looked at the growing body of research highlighting how character traits and resilience are directly linked to being able to do well at school, university and in the workplace. We heard how working on building resilience to setbacks and an increased sense of control of their lives for young people with low self worth had led to increased literacy and numeracy results. So these so-called “soft skills” can lead to hard results.

Increasingly we hear schools saying that developing these traits is their core business and that for employers these more intangible skills of sticking at it and not giving up or accepting second best, empathy and teamwork is precisely what they’re looking for in potential recruits.

To summarise what we heard from academics, head teachers, employers and charities leaders alike “whatever qualifications you might have, where you are on the character scale will have a big impact on what you achieve in life”. An amazingly diverse range of speakers, from how the Headmaster of Eton, Tony Little, teaches his pupils about failing and pick themselves up again, to how Camila Batmanghelidjh – founder of Kids Company – works with some of the most deeply traumatised children in the country to rebuild their basic self-worth and faith in life, highlighted just what amazing work is being done and the difference it’s making. Alan Milburn, Chairman of the Social Mobility Commission told the Summit that we needed to break down the “Berlin Wall” between schools in the state and independent sectors to help create a more level playing field of opportunity for all. Yesterday confirmed for me that the All Party Group is onto something important for those who care about social justice. These skills really can be taught – but how do we spread the message and the good practice wider, what examples could be scaled up cost effectively and what does this mean for wider public policy?

A lot of good ideas were generated for most focus on emotional development and building relationships in early years settings, support for parents at home, introducing incentives to put more focus on these skills in schools, greater awareness in teacher training, better collaboration with the youth and voluntary and community sector. It also became clear that the needs for these skills don’t stop at 18. Some employers – and we heard direct from BT at the summit – were investing directly in the resilience and emotional wellbeing of their employees. I think my favourite quote was “people are hired for their skills and fired for their attitude”.

The All Party Group will be sending a copy of the post Summit report to Nick Clegg, who has taken an interest in the work of the Group and sent a message of support.

* Claire Tyler, Baroness Tyler of Enfield, has been in the House of Lords since 2011, taking an active role in the areas of health and social care, welfare reform, social mobility, well-being, children and family policy, machinery of government and the voluntary sector.

A more socially mobile society

The legal services sector is at the forefront of efforts to increase social mobility. The Law Society is adamant that the solicitors’ profession must have access to the best talent, irrespective of background. Indeed, that is why we and our members have been working on the issue for so long.

Our ambition is clear, we want the profession to be widely recognised as a meritocracy where the sole criteria for entry and advancement are integrity, ability and hard work.

The statistics starkly highlight the extent of recent progress. The latest edition of Trends in the Solicitors’ Profession shows that women now make up almost 50% of all solicitors on the Roll and substantially more than half (63.5%) of all trainees.

There has also been substantial progress in respect of Black and Asian Minority Ethnic solicitors. In 2011, BAME solicitors made up 12% of the Roll (compared to 7.9% nationally) and 22.1%of all trainees.

This progress led the Coalition Government’s adviser on social mobility Alan Milburn, in his review of fair access to the professions, to write that “In some cases, the legal sector is at the forefront of driving activity aimed at changing access to professional jobs… We commend these efforts and would like to see other professions following suit”.

We recognise that there is still further to go, particular to increase diversity among top roles, and also among the judiciary. It is for these reasons that continuing dialogue between the Society and the Deputy Prime Minister is so valuable. The Society will remain at the forefront of these efforts, and stands ready to work with all other interested bodies to achieve meritocracy in the sector.

A more prosperous economy

The UK legal services market as a whole directly contributed almost £26bn (or close to 2% of GDP) to the UK economy in 2010, and – by rapidly and efficiently resolving disputes – indirectly contributed much more.

Lawyers trained in England and Wales, and law firms based here in UK, are respected across the globe for their expertise. It is because UK firms are regarded as global leaders in international and commercial dispute resolution that four of the largest seven law firms in the world are based in London, and UK firms exported almost £3.6bn worth of legal services in 2010.

The Law Society is working closely with the Coalition Government to increase these exports in the future. By November this year, the Society will have accompanied the Justice Secretary and other trade ambassadors such as the Lord Mayor on trade missions to all of the emerging markets: promoting British legal expertise overseas, and bringing benefits for the economy back to the UK.

As the economy emerges from the recession, it is vital that that the country builds on its strengths to support recovery. There are few areas where Britain is stronger than in legal services.

* Nick Fluck is the Vice President of the Law Society, the representative professional body for the Solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. He will be hosting a reception during the Liberal Democrat autumn conference between 6 and 8pm on Monday 24 September. If you wish to attend please contact Richard.Heinrich [AT] lawsociety.org.uk

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

But do we all want to be Yuppies? Not everyone wants to be a politician, judge or journalist, many are thankfully still in possession of their full set of faculties. Moreover, our average western society requires roughly 20% of its population to have endured of some form of higher education, e. g. brain surgeon, so where Blair conjured his 50% from is anyone’s guess. The remaining 80% of us need some particular skill set that actually keep the cogs whirring on a daily basis. They are the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers – the people who actually make something, build something, fix something.

Successful communities – Denmark and Holland, to name the usual suspects, pay significant attention to this lot of burgers – they educate them properly, pay them properly and make sure that whatever social strata they happen to inhabit, provides no reason whatsoever for them to want to mobilise themselves out of there. Instead of busting a gut to encourage social mobility at all costs, these communities set great store by what we might conveniently call social stability.

It’s always intriguing to see how the concept of social mobility attains a wildly disproportionate degree of importance in massively unequal societies – the UK is the fourth most unequal country in the world – ponder that when you next tuck into your succulent take-away.

And who said this? “Those who were born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England more than in any comparable country. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible. The sheer scale… of private school dominance… points to a deep problem in our county, [One we have] failed to tackle with anything like the radicalism required. We live in a profoundly unequal society.” Someone should invite this man to become a member of the Liberal Democrat Party. Actually, it was Michael Gove. The fly in the ointment, of course, is that Gove’s actions are, on the whole, vanishingly distant from his utterances.

But is that the whole story? In less unequal societies – which is practically everyone else, the concept of social mobility is not often discussed, it just seems to happen all by itself, thanks in no small part to the fact that kids grow up in contented, well looked after communities where it’s not really important whether you end up staying put or moving on. What is vital, however, is that the choice is all yours. Whatever education you have opted for – bricklayer or barrister – has equipped you with a skill set that allows you to choose.

At next Saturday’s (14 July) Social Liberal Forum conference this topic will be taken for a spin by Simon Hughes, Helen Flynn, James Kempton and Duncan Exley, director of OneSociety in what promises to be a truly challenging session.

The theme for the day is “Social Justice Across Generations” – a subject ripe for some decent debate by social liberals, who seem to be too busy nowadays just fighting off regressive initiatives attempted by, well, by a variety of players, shall we say. Other sessions include “Reasserting the Liberal Democrats”, “Responding to the Coalition; New Political Movements” and “The Housing Generation Gap” – and we even get fed and watered – it doesn’t get much better. Get there early…

Kirsten de Keyser is a member of the Camden Liberal Democrat Executive Committee, the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.

* Kirsten de Keyser sits on the Camden Liberal Democrat Executive and is a member of Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine. She blogs here.

The ability to win over people one question at a time has served Nick Clegg well in his ascent up the political ladder, as the key election contests for him have not been winning a council seat from nowhere or a close-fought marginal seat contest at a general election. Rather for him they have been internal contests: the closely fought selections for the European Parliament, to be Richard Allan’s would-be successor in Sheffield Hallam and then for the party leadership.

None of those three contests, not even the last, required that much more that a series of tactical answers to each question. Despite the over-energetic efforts of Chris Huhne and some of his campaign team to make the party leadership contest about ideology and party direction, that never really took off. Instead it was a contest largely fought over different personal attributes. Televisual charm versus sharp elbows and the like.

The risk, then, is that the summer tour is a repeat of these previous selection contests – meeting members, charming members but never really getting that stuck into policy detail or ideological positioning.

That would be a huge missed opportunity as the party is greatly in need of a core votes strategy – and the summer tour provides Nick Clegg with the opportunity to set out how his passion for the media-bubble phrase of social mobility becomes an election-winning strategy for a political party. Too often the party relapses into semi-random lists of policies – as if a set of bullet points full of numbers with decimal points makes for a political message or purpose.

It is all rather too redolent of the 2005 manifesto problem – 10 individually popular headline items but not adding up to a coherent vision for the country or the party, resulting afterwards in an excess of culinary metaphors as people picked over the 2005 result with analogies such as ‘we had the right ingredients but we didn’t have a recipe to make with them’.

Since 2010 the ‘revive David Owen strategy‘ (economic competence plus social concern) has occasionally been played with but is not, at least yet, a clear core votes strategy running throughout the party’s operation.

For the two largest parties, talk about a “core votes strategy” is usually code for minimising the scale of the likely impending defeat. That is because for Labour and Tories their core vote is short of what they need to win an election outright. However, the challenge for the Liberal Democrats is rather different as the party still needs to get on an even playing field with the other two – and with a much smaller core vote at the moment, a major part of that is increasing it to the sort of core vote size Labour and Tories have.

The relatively large size of Labour’s core vote helped it weather its disasters under Michael Foot and  then again with the Gordon Brown calamities. By contrast, the smallness of the Liberal Democrat (and before that Alliance / Liberal) core vote means that tough events are far more dangerous.

For all the promise of the long-term political and social trends seeing the two-party dominance fracture in the 1970s, the perils of the Lib-Lab pact and the tragic fiasco of having a party leader on trial for conspiracy to murder were more than enough push the party into skirting with disaster instead. The merger times too are not exactly happy memories but ones that lead to the same lesson: parties with small core votes are far more vulnerable to events and adverse headwinds (to borrow the meteorological phrase that has become a favourite of those across the political spectrum from Barack Obama to David Cameron in recent times when talking about the economy).

This summer, ahead of party conference, gives Nick Clegg the chance to set out his vision of how to build up a much larger set of committed, consistent liberal voters to underpin the party’s long-term success. It would be a huge missed opportunity to pass up on that.

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

“These are challenging times but that doesn’t mean we can give up on making society fairer and helping people get on in life. In the past year, since we published the Government’s first social mobility strategy, we’ve made great progress – school children are benefiting from a cash injection through the Pupil Premium, young people are getting into jobs and training through the Youth Contract, and we’re expanding the number of families who get free childcare.

“We must create a more dynamic society. One where what matters most is the person you become, not the person you were born. Government cannot do this alone, but we must take the lead. So we’re exposing the stark gaps in life chances by publishing a wide range of tracking data to show how well society is doing here and now. No government has done this. The data shows we’ve got a long way to go, but that’s why it’s there – to hold a flame to our feet until the gaps close. It’s not an overnight fix, but it is a long term ambition that is achievable.”

(Available on the BBC website here.)

In his speech Nick announced government plans to publish a “snapshot” of social mobility in the UK using 17 “trackers”, including birth weight, social background and eligibility for free school meals. His office says this is ‘the first time that any government in the world has published such data.’

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

The pupil premium and the extension of Sure Start to two–year olds are important policy wins. But Family Action is concerned that the Coalition is missing the boat by not focusing enough on babyhood and the first steps in early intervention. A wealth of neuroscientific and Millenium Cohort research shows that the real obstacles to social mobility begin in babyhood – relying on education will mean intervention will simply reach some children too late.

Graham Allen and Frank Field’s reports on early intervention and life chances have highlighted that the perinatal period – before and after the birth of a baby – is a key time in a child’s development. Both call on Government to start safeguarding vulnerable children’s futures before they are even born.

Postnatal and antenatal (known jointly as perinatal) depression have a huge impact on children’s development. Children exposed to maternal depression in the first year of life are more likely to have behavioural problems, delayed cognition and poor language development long before their first day of school. Add cuts to welfare and poor quality housing to the mix and you have a whole section of children born into predominantly low-income families whose circumstances at birth dictate their life chances.

Family Action’s new Against All Odds: Mind the Gap report highlights the gaps in provision for expectant and new mothers experiencing depression; there are services out there for mothers with severe and enduring mental health difficulties but our concern is for mothers whose depression is perhaps not as severe but no less damaging to the mother-child relationship and their child’s future. The Family Nurse Partnership and the extension of the health vsitors programme are important initiatives but nurses and health visitors do not have time to give to the sustained emotional support that all depressed mothers need and they cannot provide support with the financial and practical hardship that makes matters worse.

Big society can help plug the gaps. Through our Perinatal Support Service from four locations across England. volunteer ‘befrienders’, supported by a professional Perinatal Co-ordinator work with mums at risk of depression by helping reduce their sense of social isolation, and by supporting them practically and emotionally during pregnancy and up to a year after birth. But sufficient welfare support for this group is also needed.

Social mobility begins at birth. Education is important but catching vulnerable children at birth will transform the lives of at risk groups. That’s why we’re warning the Coalition to Mind the Gap and calling on them to sign up to our campaign to improve the odds for vulnerable families and children.

* Anthony McCaul is the Senior Media and Campaigns Officer for charity Family Action. Family Action has been providing emotional, practical and financial support for disadvantaged and vulnerable families since 1869. You can find out more information about Family Action here.

Nick Clegg will next week set out long-term plans to break the grip of private schools on the British establishment when he publishes proposals for a surge in social mobility based on the “pupil premium”. … Clegg, launching a two-week drive on social mobility, which he sees as one of the central goals of his deputy premiership, will set out in a speech on Monday how he wants the £1.25bn pupil premium to be used by schools.

Schools currently get a pupil premium of £488 per child on free school meals from central government. But the cash is not ringfenced, so once schools are handed the money by central government, there is no requirement to spend it in any specific way.

Clegg, instinctively opposed to central targets, has rejected setting requirements on how the cash is spent. He will instead highlight the most effective programmes without ruling out others. But school performance tables will be required to show the achievement of deprived pupils covered by the pupil premium. Schools will also be made to publish information online about how they have used the premium.

Clegg has insisted that all his school reforms, including more academies, free schools and greater discipline, are designed to help the poorest children in society.

* Newshound: bringing you the best Lib Dem commentary published in print or online.

Our central message was that much of a young person’s chance of a good job or university place is shaped long before age 16 or 18. Therefore the drive to equalise opportunities for those who don’t enjoy the privileges of a private education – ie the vast majority of us – or can’t access the best state schools need to begin well before school starts.

The group was established to look at why social mobility in Britain is low by international standards and has not greatly improved despite successive governments’ efforts. The report called, Seven Key Truths About Social Mobility, brings together findings from a range of other studies, to draw out the most important challenges for policy-makers.

The SEVEN KEY TRUTHS identified are:

1. The point of greatest leverage for social mobility is what happens between 0 and 3, primarily in the home
2. You can also break the cycle through education…
3. …the most important controllable factor being the quality of your teaching
4. But it’s also about what happens after the school bell rings
5. University is the top determinant of later opportunities – so pre-18 attainment is key
6. But later pathways to mobility are possible, given the will and support
7. Personal resilience and emotional wellbeing are the missing link in the chain

The full report can be found at www.appg-socialmobility.org

Much attention has been given to the fact that a fifth of places offered by elite universities go to the privately educated, though only 7% of the population go to fee-paying schools. In fact the gaps between the private and state sector, and between the better off and worse off in the state sector, can be traced right back to the earliest years. The report makes clear that child’s development from zero to three is the “point of greatest leverage” for social mobility. We acknowledged that this is “difficult territory” for policy makers as it relates to parenting as well as what happens in childcare and nursery settings. But of course there is, as the report says, “both outstanding parenting and poor parenting in every income group and background”.

The report finds that there are multiple ways to improve social mobility throughout childhood and adolescence – both in and out of school. Particular focus needs to go on school readiness and progress in reading, having excellent teachers in schools in less affluent areas, and increasing participation of lower-income children in out-of-school activities. Successful programmes from innovative employers that can help to narrow the gap later on in life are also highlighted. A key factor at all ages is the development of emotional wellbeing, personal resilience and ‘character traits’, which the report says warrants more public policy focus. This is an area I have led on for the group. There is a emerging body of fascinating research in this field which points to the importance of young people developing the resilience that enables them to bounce back from life’s knocks and take advantage of second and third chances.

For me it’s a fundamental part of social justice that everyone should have an equal chance to get on in life. For too many people today it is still the case that their future prospects are determined by the circumstances of their birth rather than by their talents and efforts. The evidence tells us that what happens in the early years, particularly in the home, make a big difference. If we are to break out of this cycle of privilege and disadvantage, we need to shine a spotlight on the early years and provide more support to parents.

The group is new entering its really interesting phase – attempting to come up with some new policy ideas which have a wider resonance in a time of severe austerity. It will also be fascinating to see whether the current cross party consensus holds or whether we end up with dissenting reports!

* Claire Tyler, Baroness Tyler of Enfield, has been in the House of Lords since 2011, taking an active role in the areas of health and social care, welfare reform, social mobility, well-being, children and family policy, machinery of government and the voluntary sector.

“Every parent wants their child to do better than they did, and every parent wants their child to fulfil their potential,” he said.

State intervention to teach children as young as two will form the centrepiece of his “obsession” which will see childcare made the coalition’s highest priority social policy. Next month he will make a major announcement on his “passion” for shared parental leave and for extending the rights of flexible working.

And he pledged to take on those with the “sepia-tinted 1950s” opinion that mothers should not work, after attacks on his City lawyer wife Miriam, claiming her critics are as “weird” as homophobes…

Early intervention in the lives of children is “one of the most radical things we are doing and don’t shout about enough”, he said.

From next year, 260,000 children from the poorest 40 per cent of families in England will receive 15 hours of free childcare during term time, in a move costing £650m.

He expands on this point in the interview itself:

“If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it’s the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that.”

The coalition is now “shovelling in resources to younger children on a scale that has not happened, ever”. He becomes almost emotional, banging the table and fixing me with a hard stare. He has been “very affected” by research on the “profound level of social segregation” in the UK. “Despite all the money and good intentions under Labour, when times were good, the needle of social mobility didn’t twitch. It’s because we didn’t start early enough.”

There are those who fear an arms race for ever younger intervention. But Clegg is determined; childhood policy is now an “obsession” and the Government’s top social policy priority. “I say this as a young dad seeing children going into primary school: I don’t think we should underestimate the formative effect on a child of those first years in primary school.”

And in the quickfire question section:

Yes Minister or the Thick Of It? The Thick of It. But there is nowhere near as much effing and blinding in the Liberal Democrat press office.

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

Banks and law firms in London today backed Nick Clegg’s campaign to open up recruitment to all social backgrounds.

The Deputy Prime Minister announced that Barclays, HSBC, Credit Suisse, RBS and a string of other City institutions have signed up to his “business compact” on internships, work experience and recruitment…

“This is an important step towards a society where it’s what you know, not who you know, that counts,” Mr Clegg said.

“Working with the Coalition, the biggest hitters in the City of London are helping lead the way to a fairer, more open society.

“By opening their doors to young people from all walks of life, this marks the start of a culture shift at the heart of British business, driven by the belief that ability and drive should trump connections and privilege.”

This follows initiatives with both the fashion and public relations sectors and fits well with Nick Clegg’s end of year message about creating an open society rather than one dominated by self-perpetuating elites.

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

It’s hard to see how the Open Society concept, with its nods to Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, will resonate outside of Westminster at a time of increasing economic concern. When people’s major concerns are the cost of energy bills, the cost of living and worries about unemployment and job security, it is unlikely that a political leader’s philosophical musings are really going to transform his political situation.

As I have written many times, Clegg is right to talk about the importance of social mobility, with opportunity not being decided by the lottery of birth. Declining social mobility is one of the biggest problems facing the UK today. As somebody who attended a North Eastern comprehensive, I feel passionately about the issue. Indeed, the rise of politicians with the background of leaders such as Clegg is one of many symptoms of a decline in social mobility (as well as power being concentrated in an increasingly narrow elite).

Clegg is right to point out that as a country, low levels of social mobility mean that we are not making the most of our potential and that too many people from lower income backgrounds are unable to make the most of their individual potential.

That is an issue which resonates with many ordinary voters. However, the rest of his speech might well be viewed through the prism of out of touch politicians discussing ‘ivory towers issues.’ I would instinctively agree with many of the points raised in Clegg’s speech, but it is hard to say that now is the time to debate niceties about constitutional reform as the UK runs the risk of returning to recession.

When the public perceive politicians as being out of touch, it’s hard to see how politicians directing a speech purely at the Westminster bubble is going to change that. In Clegg’s case, in particular, it’s difficult to envisage such a Westminster-centric speech restoring his party’s brand amongst the general electorate.

So many polls show that people, particularly those from aspirational working class and middle class families, do not believe that politicians understand their concerns or share their economic worries. This is surely not a time for the leader of a political party suffering from dire poll ratings to wander off into philosophical musings. I doubt that the “alarm clock heroes” identified by Clegg a year ago will be particularly impressed.

* David Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange.

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email voice@libdemvoice.org if you are interested in contributing.

Oh wait, hang on.

Sorry, wrong speech.

That was John Major back in the day, though the words would have fitted seamlessly into Nick Clegg’s latest speech.

Aside from a bit of channeling of John Major (I’ll let you decide if that’s better or worse than channeling David Owen), Nick Clegg’s speech to Demos and the Open Society Foundation was really rather good.

As a frequent critic of the way he talks about social mobility (in short – it’s a bad phrase for communication purposes, it’s a poor phrase for political
strategy and it’s a distracting phrase for settling the party’s policy direction; otherwise I love it), it is only fair to report that this speech tackled many of those issues by an approach that could be called ‘social mobility plus’.

Social mobility plus

So yes, social mobility was there, but it was there as but the first of five key features which Nick Clegg said an open society should have:

1. Social mobility – “there should be no unfair barriers to people’s talent and aspiration”;
2. Devolution – “a wide dispersal of power: both political and economic”, which gives a much more distinctively Liberal Democrat approach to the usual localism/Big Society mélange, and hence the rhetoric about pushing through Lords reform to break one of the oldest bastions of unaccountable political power;
3. Open government and a free press – “the sharing of knowledge and information” that is central to a liberal approach of freeing up and empowering individuals;
4. “A fair distribution of wealth” – or in other words, whilst the emphasis on social mobility sidesteps questions about income inequalities, Nick Clegg isn’t just interested in fair processes. There are outcomes too he thinks should be directly changed, albeit of wealth rather than income: “lower taxes on work and effort, a greater contribution from the wealthy”; and
5. “An intrinsically internationalist outlook”.

Those five steps add up to a program that fits with the party’s traditions, face up to current political and economic challenges and offer a distinctive approach. In other words, it is a good framework.

Some of the turns of phrase were also clear and effective, particularly on devolving power:

It is not a lottery when decisions about provision are made by people who can be held to democratic account. That is not a postcode lottery – it is a postcode democracy.

The “but” from my “many” comment above comes from the choice of language. As the speech was part hosted by the Open Society Foundation, it is not unreasonable for Nick Clegg to have used the “open society” phrase.

The general ethos behind it also fits with similar previous phrases, such as distinguishing between people who are instinctively drawbridge up or drawbridge down people (think relations with Europe, immigration and so on).

Presumably we are now all in favour of mobile, open drawbridges, one in each local community and all pointed to face the future (unless the local community votes in a referendum to raise the drawbridge and point it backwards, but we try not to think about that).

Whether “open society” it is the right phrase for the party to use is another question. It is one of those phrases used in certain political and philosophical circles but almost never by the general voting public. Karl Popper and his theories of the open society are a good basis for a liberal philosophy, but it does leave the question hanging as to whether this is the right phrase to use in general communications – and if it is going to be used consistently.

As I’ve commented before, the party’s messaging currently not only lacks clarity but also – crucially – lacks consistency. A consistent, not quite optimal, message is far more effective than the most perfect message imaginable which is then only used sporadically.

But “open society” certainly has one thing in its favour for most Liberal Democrat activists. It is free of alarm clocks. Farewell, Alarm Clock Britain.

Watch extracts from Nick Clegg’s speech

The Deputy Prime Minister’s press team did a good job of securing advanced media coverage for much of the speech; hence the flurry of stories about marriage, the Lords and more. That coverage has continued to be good after the speech, including these two clips.

Nick Clegg on marriage:

Nick Clegg on House of Lords reform:

Full text of Nick Clegg’s speech

First, let me thank Demos and the Open Society Foundation for inviting to me to speak. I can think of no better moment to talk about the open society, and the urgent need to rally to its defence.

The values of the open society – social mobility; political pluralism; civil liberties; democracy; internationalism – are the source of my liberalism. And reflecting on the events of the last year, it is clear to me that they have rarely been more important than they are today.

Because we are at a critical, and potentially dangerous, moment – both in the world at large and here in the UK. History teaches that, at times of deep economic uncertainty, societies become more exposed to the forces of division – populism, insularity, separatism, an ‘us versus them’ mentality.

Rather than remaining open to the world and facing the future, societies can begin to turn inwards and lose confidence in progress. The danger in the UK is that the forces of reaction and retreat overwhelm our instinct for openness and optimism. That we succumb to fear – the greatest enemy of openness – in these dark economic times.

So today I will set out my vision of an open society – at the heart of liberal politics – and identify the key battles that we face to promote fairness, liberalism and openness in these difficult days.

We British are an open-spirited people. But we are hobbled by closed institutions. By instinct we believe in fair play and giving everyone a fair chance in life. But our politics and economy are distorted by unaccountable hoards of power, wealth and influence: media moguls; dodgy lobbyists corrupting our politics; irresponsible bankers taking us for a ride and then helping themselves to massive bonuses; boardrooms closed against the interests of shareholders and workers. The values of the hoarders are increasingly out of touch with the spirit of openness alive in the UK.

It is not often you’ll hear me say this, but I agree with Tony Blair. In his words “the big difference is no longer between left and right, it is between open and closed”.

So what is an open society?

It is a society where powerful citizens are free to shape their own lives. It has five vital features:

i) social mobility, so that all are free to rise;

ii) dispersed power in politics, the media and the economy;

iii) transparency, and the sharing of knowledge and information;

iv) a fair distribution of wealth and property; and

v) an internationalist outlook

By contrast a closed society is one in which:

i) a child’s opportunities are decided by the circumstances of their birth

ii) power is hoarded by the elite

iii) information is jealously guarded

iv) wealth accumulates in the hands of the few, not the many; and

v) narrow nationalism trumps enlightened internationalism

Closed societies – opaque, hierarchical, insular – are the sorts of society my party has opposed for over a hundred and fifty years.

That’s why Gladstone fought for a liberal internationalism; why Lloyd George battled the House of Lords; and why liberals from Cobden to Grimond sought to break up the monopolies and cartels that allow economic vested interests to trump the interests of ordinary citizens.

I will shortly say more about each of the five features of an open society. But first, let me demonstrate how this liberal vision of an open society is distinct from the philosophies of both left and right.

There are three main political traditions in Britain: socialism; conservatism; and liberalism.

Socialists support the idea of the good society, typically judged in terms of equality of income. In order to bring about this end they use the state quite aggressively in terms of labour market regulation, centralised public services and through tax and benefits.

Conservatives support the idea of a big society, with responsibility shared throughout society – people are responsible both for themselves and each other. The emphasis is naturally on non-state institutions such as marriage, the family, churches and voluntary organisations.

The liberal ideal is of the open society, where power is vested in people, not in the state or other institutions. This means that individuals need the capabilities and opportunities to chart their own course through life, and to hold institutions to account. So while the good society needs a strong state, and the big society needs strong social institutions, the open society needs strong citizens.

Of course these three political streams of thought will sometimes overlap. The Prime Minister’s particular approach to the big society, for example, is broadly compatible with the liberal concept of an open society.

Making users of public services more powerful; shifting power down to voluntary or community groups; and encouraging people to take responsibility for themselves: none of these do violence to the principles of the open society. Quite the opposite.

But there is nonetheless an important philosophical difference here. Advocates of both a big society and an open society will be sceptical of state power – and aware of the dangers of state oppression. But open society champions are more alive to the way in which society and social institutions can be oppressive, too. A culture of intolerance can destroy liberty even when the state has liberal laws. Societies can oppress, as well as states. As Isaiah Berlin reminded us, ‘To be deprived of my liberty at the hands of my family or friends or fellow citizens is to be deprived of it just as effectively.’ That is why the constitution of my party warns that people can be enslaved not only by ignorance and poverty, but also by conformity.

The institutions of our society are constantly evolving. Just look at the way the roles of men and women, and attitudes to marriage and divorce, have changed over the last century. We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, bread-winning dad and aproned, homemaking mother – and try and preserve it in aspic.

That’s why open society liberals and big society conservatives will take a different view on a tax break for marriage. We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.

It is clear that one of the most important differences between the three traditions is in our attitudes towards change. Open society liberals are progressives: we believe that the future can and ought to be better than the past.

Conservatives, by definition, tend to defend the status quo, embracing change reluctantly and often after the event.

Socialists see themselves as progressives, with a vision for a better future. The problem is: they have a fixed blueprint for what that better society looks like. Like the conservative right, the socialist or left-wing social democrat view is that “we – either the elite or the state – know what is good for you”. Liberals pay people the compliment that they know what is good for them, without ideological instruction.

So liberals are optimistic about the potential of people, collectively and individually, to lead good lives and shape good communities. And we value diversity, as societies experiment their way forward. Open societies are raucous, noisy, and sometimes unpredictable – but that is a price eminently worth paying for our freedom. The open society is not for those who want a quiet life.

Let me now turn to the five key features of an open society.

First, in an open society there should be no unfair barriers to people’s talent and aspiration. All roads must be open.

In a closed society, the routes to advancement are blocked by an elite who hoard opportunities for themselves and their children. A series of ‘glass floors’ ensure that the children of the affluent maintain their standing relative to other groups. A closed society is one in which people ‘know their place’. In an open society, people choose their place.

A social mobility approach to fairness is different to Labour’s ‘good society’ agenda, which focuses more on inequalities in terms of current income. Labour’s approach was based on a snapshot view of current income levels, rather than long-term life chances.

But real fairness is about real opportunities. Inequalities become injustices when they are fixed; passed on, generation to generation. So our focus must be on equipping people to flourish, and get on in life.

That is why I have made clear that intergenerational social mobility is the principal objective of the Coalition’s social policy. And why I have been so determined to increase our investment in the vital early years, including, recently, by extending the new two-year old offer to an additional 130,000 toddlers in working families.

Even in these lean times, we have found an additional £1 billion for a Youth Contract to head off long-term youth unemployment, which can scar life chances.

But Government cannot do this alone. Some of our key professions still need to do a much better job of opening their doors. To take one example, the legal profession remains woefully unrepresentative.

More than two thirds of all high court judges and top barristers are privately-educated. Nine out ten QCs are men. Nineteen out of twenty are white.

I know that us politicians have to get our house in order too. Not least my own party, which is too male and too pale. We are working hard to fix that. But my message to the legal profession, and especially to the bar, is: you are not doing enough either. It cannot be right that justice for the many is overseen by the representatives of the few.

Both the law and politics must, above all, represent the nation as a whole. But the nation is not represented in them. We’ve had years of warm words and incremental progress. It’s time for a step change.

The second distinguishing feature of an open society is a wide dispersal of power: both political and economic.

In terms of politics, this means maximum devolution and localism, including real financial decentralisation. That’s why we are giving much more power to local authorities, taking away central government financial controls and giving borrowing powers. That’s why we are striking deals with our major cities, so that they can once again be the real engines of growth in our economy.

In public services, dispersing power means more flexibility, more personalisation and more choice. More personal budgets in health and social care, for example. These are a perfect example of the way that more power can lie in the hands of the users of universally-provided, taxpayer-funded public services.

Opponents of localism brandish the phrase “post code lottery” to dramatize differences in provision between areas.

But it is not a lottery when decisions about provision are made by people who can be held to democratic account. That is not a postcode lottery — it is a postcode democracy.

Of course it is challenging for central governments to give away power. To give credit to the Labour party, there were some real achievements in terms of devolving power during their early years in office. Devolution to Scotland and Wales and the creation of the London mayoralty were big, positive steps. But after that initial flourish, Labour reverted to centralising, conservative (small-c conservative) type.

And there is still much more to do to open up our political system, not least reform of party funding to loosen the hold of vested interests; a register of lobbyists; the right to recall MPs; and, finally, real reform of the House of Lords. The Lords is perhaps the most potent symbol of a closed society. Because we are in the process of building support for a Lords reform package, I am sometimes advised not to be too outspoken on this issue. But I’m afraid this is one boat that urgently needs rocking.

Lloyd George described the House of Lords as being “a body of five hundred men chosen at random from amongst the unemployed”. To be honest, it might be better if it was. Of course among our peers there are those with valuable experience and expertise.

But a veneer of expertise can surely no longer serve as an alibi for a chamber which legislates on behalf of the people – but is not held to account by the people. The Lords as currently constituted is an affront to the principles of openness which underpin a modern democracy.

So we will have a House of Lords reform Bill in the second session of this parliament. I am hopeful that we can secure a significant degree of cross-party consensus on this, and indeed support from Lords themselves. But let there be no doubt: if it comes to a fight, the will of the Commons will prevail.

Turning to the economy, there are hoards of power in the City of London; in certain industries; on the boards of large corporations. The result of this power imbalance is an economy that is lopsided: too reliant on London and the South East, too in thrall to financial services, delivering unequal rewards in terms of wages; and promoting short-termism over the long-term investment necessary for our shared prosperity. And I understand the anger that people feel at the bonuses still flowing to bankers, especially those who have been bailed out by the taxpayer.

If we are serious about tackling wealth inequality; serious about responsible capitalism; serious about ensuring everyone contributes fairly to the government’s coffers, then we cannot be neutral on this issue. We took a tough line on bank bonuses last year, particularly in the banks where the government is the biggest shareholder. We ensured that the bonus pools in RBS and Lloyds shrank; that all bonuses paid to chief executives and executive directors were entirely in deferred shares, not in cash; and that a limit of £2,000 was placed on cash bonuses.

The profound impact of the banking implosion on our economy, and on our society, has since become even clearer. There has been no lessening of public anger towards the banks – and there will be no let-up in the Government’s determination to keep the clamps on bonus payments.

So, on the eve of bonus season, let no-one be in any doubt about our determination to use our clout as the major shareholder in these banks to block any irresponsible payments, or any rewards for failure.

I share the view of many that we need a more responsible capitalism. The question is what we do about it. Typically, for those on the left, building a more responsible capitalism means more state regulation. While for those on the right, it is principally a question of individual morality.

Judicious regulation and individual responsibility both have a part to play, of course. But we cannot rely on moral individuals to deliver a responsible capitalism. Nor can responsibility be mandated from on high, by the state.

For liberals, the key issue is here is the distribution of power. Shareholders with real power over boards. Workers with a real stake in their businesses – for example through employee ownership. Only by rewiring the power relations in our economy can we build a responsible capitalism. (I’ll have more to say on this subject in a speech in the New Year.)

The third characteristic of an open society is the sharing of knowledge and information. In a closed society the elite think that, for the masses, ignorance is bliss. But in an open society there is no monopoly of wisdom. So transparency is vital.

That is why the Freedom of Information Act was a quintessentially open society measure. It is unfortunate that Blair now says he regrets passing it. The Coalition Government is extending FOI to other bodies, and also reducing the 30-year rule to 20 years.

Transparency is not just necessary in government activities. There is a good case for it in a range of areas within the private sector, too – such as bonuses, gender pay gaps and environmental activities. And indeed earnings differentials, to help restrain excessive top pay.

That’s why the Coalition Government has recently completed a call for evidence on options in this area, and we’ll be looking very hard at the results in the next few weeks.

We also need a positive approach to the freedom of our press. A free press is absolutely central to an open society in which information is dispersed, corruption is exposed, and the powerful are kept honest. That is why we are already taking far-reaching action to reform England’s libel laws, so that public-spirited journalists are not muzzled by the threat of litigation by big businesses and wealthy individuals.

But we must also remember that media outlets serve commercial interests. So this calls for, firstly, a credible approach to media regulation and governance. The Leveson Inquiry must be enabled and encouraged to do a thorough job. Second, ensuring diversity of ownership. A corporate media monopoly threatens a free press almost as much as a state one. We must be just as vigilant against vested interests in the media as in politics or business, and ensure genuine plurality.

The fourth feature of an open society is a fair distribution of wealth. Wealth underpins independence. There is a reason for the phrase ‘independently wealthy’. Wealth and property can act as a buffer against difficult economic times. And it gives people a real stake in society.
Wealth inequality is very much greater than income inequality, and widening. The bottom third of households hold just three per cent of the nation’s wealth. The top third hold three-quarters of it. This inequality of wealth then cascades down the generations, potentially widening the opportunity gap.

To give you a practical example, those people without financial help from the ‘bank of mum and dad’ now have to wait until their mid—30s before they can buy their first home.

Eighteen months ago, speaking as a guest of Demos then too, I argued that the liberal approach to tax distinguishes between earned income, and unearned wealth. That’s why we’ve put up capital gains tax while cutting income tax for ordinary working families. And, of course, I’d like to go further in pursuit of this fiscal liberalism. Lower taxes on work and effort, a greater contribution from the wealthy: an open society approach to tax.

The final feature of an open society is an intrinsically internationalist outlook – in contrast to a politics that clings solely to the nation state.

In my lifetime, the world has been sliced up and labelled in a number of different ways: “East” and “West”; “developed” and “developing”; “north” and “south”; “Christian” and “Muslim”, and so on.

But for me, the most important divide has always been between open societies and closed societies. Open societies choose democracy and freedom at home, and engagement and responsibility abroad. Closed societies favour protectionism in economic policy, and detachment from foreign affairs.

The temptation to turn inwards has been understandably strong over the last decade, given economic turbulence. The contagion that can spread across the world’s financial system was demonstrated in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago. But there are more positive forms of contagion too. Investment flows across borders continue to increase, tying the fates of nations more closely together.

And it is simply no good attempting to be a closed nation in a more open world. Just as it is better to share power within a nation, it is often better to share power between nations.

And, when it has counted most, Europeans have stood together. Recognising that we are stronger shoulder-to-shoulder than we are apart. Now, we must do the same again. There is self-evidently a deep crisis in the eurozone. We had a disappointing outcome from the summit ten days ago.

This does not mean that the UK should step away from our European partners. So we will be re-engaging on a whole host of vital issues: staying open to the rest of the world, not least our Eastern and Southern neighbours; showing bold European leadership on defence and foreign affairs; pushing ahead to complete the single market.

So, to conclude. An open society is a liberal society, with five key features, from social mobility to internationalism. Open societies are challenging, fluid, progressive and innovative. They require energy and enterprise and courage.

Right now the fight for openness, against the forces of reaction and retreat, is as important as ever. But for liberals, there is no option of ducking this fight. For as Karl Popper himself wrote: “If we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society.”

I think there is a danger that we are defined by a relatively small set of issues that are relevant and significant but do not give a rounded picture of what the Liberal Democrats are in government in order to achieve.

As he rightly says, there’s a danger in the events of 2011 that the party ends up leaving just that impression:

It would be a mistake for the Lib-Dems to come to be known in the public minds as the party that in 2011 was the party that was in favour of AV and EU.

Being known only for those two policies would certainly be a mistake. As to what else the party should communicate, Jeremy Browne says:

I want us to communicate with more enthusiasm than on any other subject our desire to see a meritocratic, liberal, opportunity society where people regardless of the wealth of their parents can maximise their potential and thrive and prosper.

Here I disagree with him somewhat for, as I’ve written before, there are major problems with taking social mobility as the party’s core message:

“Social mobility” certainly is a phrase that many in policy-making and government circles use but, rather like “street furniture”, despite being popular in such circles it is almost never used by people outside such circles. You don’t get many people talking about how great the “street furniture” is near the flat they have just moved to nor about their hopes for the future “social mobility” of their children or grandchildren.

It would be intriguing to see quite what most people actually think the phrase means. I have a strong hunch that many people would associate improving “mobility” with getting more people to move, thinking it is just a phrase about housing policies. But regardless, when politicians lapse into vocabulary that is not found on the doorstep, it is normally time for the politicians to reach for a new vocabulary if they want to use phrases that have the power of explanation and persuasion.

The phrase also has the problem that mobility is not a one-way process – it means people moving down just as it also means people moving up. Talking up how we want people to move down is not an obvious route to political success.

But even aside from these messaging problems, the phrase leaves untouched the core question of how bothered – or not – we are about overall levels of inequality. A highly mobile and high unequal society is possible to imagine, and is one that would sit comfortably with the urgings of right-wing economists such as Milton Friedman. It was Friedman who, at the start of his famous TV series, justified inequality as long as it was accompanied by high social mobility.

Talking of social mobility has some tactical uses when in coalition with the Conservatives, given this resulting common ground. But a highly socially mobile, Friedman-style society is not a Liberal Democrat one.

Those problems are surmountable, but so far the party shows only limited signs of doing so. Moreover, whilst Jeremy Browne deserves credit for avoiding the dreaded phrase “social mobility” itself, the language he uses does not match up with that you hear from other Liberal Democrat ministers, even ones particularly good at putting over a coherent view of what Liberal Democrats in government means.

As with party conference, the party continues to face a problem of many people saying sort of roughly somewhat a bit the same things rather than having a clear and consistent message.

The last government’s record was far from perfect, but Milburn should advise the Coalition to recognise the very real progress made and learn from the successes just as much as from the failings.

Some Ministers, including Lib Dems, have bizarrely trashed the last government’s poverty record by pretending they were in office for only two years. ‘Child poverty rose by 200,000’ they have claimed. Well, yes, if you take 2005 as the starting point and 2007 as the end point. But if you take 1997 as the starting point and 2010 as the end point, the Office for National Statistics will tell you child poverty was reduced by 900,000.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies attributes this progress in somewhat equal measure to increased parental employment and the targeting of higher support to low income families with children through benefits and tax credits.

The absurd idea that ending child poverty should not involve counting the number of children in poverty is a disturbing and regressive echo of the approach that led to child poverty accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s. We have comprehensively responded to the myth making on measuring child poverty this way before.

Milburn needs also to remind the Government that tackling the scandal of child poverty should be a national priority in the good times but even more so in the bad times. Doing right by these children is also doing right by the economy. By limiting children’s potential, poverty reduces the skills available to employers, and impedes economic growth. Living with child poverty costs Britain at least £25 billion a year.

There are now two main government narratives about child poverty. In the yellow corner is the ‘social mobility’ narrative, led by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg; and in the blue corner is the more emotive ‘bad British parents’ narrative, led by Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith.

The social mobility narrative suggests that with a narrow focus on improving the quality of early years services and schooling, children can flourish and succeed despite material deprivation at home and regardless of being socially and economically excluded from the mainstream of society. The evidence is clear that high quality early education and care leads to improved outcomes for children and the effects are the most long lasting for the most disadvantaged children – hence the importance of this investment. But the most powerful factor is still the home environment, so if you make their parents worse off, chances are you will not get the same effect. And we have no evidence yet of the long-term impact on child poverty of these policies. As readers of The Spirit Level will know, the evidence points strongly to another relationship – that higher social mobility is an outcome resulting from a more equal society with lower levels of income and wealth inequality.

There are fundamental issues that the social mobility narrative does not address. The UK economy has a growing problem of dependency on low pay. In the 1960s, pay accounted for 60% of GDP, but it is only 53% today. Pay is shared less fairly too, with much larger pay differentials between those at the top and the bottom and twice as many low paid jobs in the economy today as there were in the 1970’s.

The single biggest cause of child poverty is therefore the lack of jobs with a decent income that parents can raise their families on. There are far more children in poverty because their parent is a care worker, a retail assistant, a cleaner, a factory worker or a hospitality worker than because their parent is a gambler, alcoholic or drug addict. Around 6 in every 10 children below the poverty line are in homes where there is a parent in work.

The bad British parents narrative (which I have written on before) is a surprisingly literal pursuit of a ‘nanny state’ for its Conservative and Liberal Democrat proponents. It suggests that state services need to intervene much more in the lives of low income families, forcing parents to work and to improve their bad parenting skills. If a parent is in work but the family are still too poor, then it is they – rather than unscrupulous employers – who will face new financial penalties under the in-work conditionality rules of the Universal Credit.

Measured after housing costs, there are 3.5 million children below the poverty line inBritaintoday. This is around 3 in every 10 children and it is about twice as high a child poverty rate as countries like Germany, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden. Are we really to believe that the key difference between theUKand our European neighbours with much lower levels of child poverty is the poor quality of British parents? There is in fact no evidence that low income families are any worse at parenting than anyone else.

Surely it is differences such as better pay and conditions for workers, adequate benefit and tax credit payments, higher state investment in universal childcare provision, more affordable housing and high quality public services that explains why they are doing so much better for their children that we are in the UK.

So, on Tuesday, we will be looking to Milburn to remind the Coalition about what the evidence says about why people are in poverty, what works to reduce or prevent poverty and, ultimately, that rising child poverty will be an indelible mark not just on the lives and life chances of children and our national prosperity but also on the Coalition’s legacy.

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email voice@libdemvoice.org if you are interested in contributing.

The evidence shows that even when children start school at age five on a reasonably even footing, those from disadvantaged backgrounds begin to diverge dramatically from their peers in terms of attainment.In 2009, for example, 38% of pupils in schools in the 10% most income deprived areas gained five A*-C grades (including English and Maths) at GCSE, whilst 63% achieved this benchmark in the 10% least income deprived areas, a gap of 25% (DCSF, 2010).

Education levels can be directly linked to a person’s happiness, earning power, and even health and longevity. This is why educational disadvantage remains one of the UK’s most unjust and pervasive problems.

It is a complex and deeply-rooted issue, with no one ‘quick-fix’ solution. I have seen increasing evidence, however of the power that education has to transform lives and, within a school, the single most important thing which can make a difference to a pupil’s future is access to effective teachers and leaders.

Teach First was founded to create, equip and mobilise a movement of leaders with a life-long commitment to raising the achievement, aspiration and access to opportunity of children from low socio-economic backgrounds.

We are making steady progress. This year Teach First was one of the most popular choices for graduates, with 6,000 applying for over 750 places on the two-year Leadership Development Programme. In September, those who got through the rigorous application process started teaching in 350 partner schools in challenging circumstances in six regions across the country. They all want to make a difference and most stay in teaching and engaged with our mission long-term. In July this year, the quality of Teach First’s training was rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in all 44 categories assessed.

The Liberal Democrats have been supporters of Teach First since our launch, as have the two other main political parties. More recently, the coalition government’s support for our expansion, and the support we receive from our corporate partners and the schools we work with, has been invaluable in enabling Teach First to grow in numbers and expand our reach over the last nine years.

Teach First cannot address this problem alone, and as we head towards our tenth anniversary in 2012, and set out plans for the next ten years, a real focus will be on strengthening our partnerships with people and organisations that share the same goal.

If businesses, government, parents, schools and charities like Teach First continue to work together to tackle the attainment gap, I sincerely believe that one day every child in the UK will have access to a great education and the life chances that come with this. We should expect no less.

* Brett Wigdortz is Founder and CEO of Teach First. 

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email voice@libdemvoice.org if you are interested in contributing.

“Tackling the financial deficit is the Coalition’s most immediate task. But tackling the opportunity deficit – creating an open, socially mobile society – is our guiding purpose.”

These are strong words indeed, marking an unequivocal commitment to improving the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. At a very minimum, they indicate a clear intention to manage the necessary public spending cuts in a way that recognises this laudable goal.

Last week, an analysis by the IFS revealed an expected fall in public spending on education of 3.5% per year in real terms between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Far more striking, however, are the discrepancies in the severity of cuts to be felt by the different areas within the education budget. Spending on schools, for example, will be essentially protected (with projected cuts of around only 1%). In stark contrast, the Early Intervention Grant – encompassing Sure Start and other early years spending – is expected to face an overall cut of around 22%. It is this deep and disproportionate cutting of early years spending that actually flies in the face of the stated desire to improve social mobility.

There is now an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that early intervention and a focus on the early years of child development are where the biggest differences can be made. The government itself has received two powerful reports on precisely this theme: those by Frank Field and Graham Allen.

The scientific evidence on the crucial importance of early brain development to later life chances –- outlined in detail by the Harvard Centre on the Developing Child -– is clearly established. So too, thanks to Nobel prize winning economist James Heckman, is the economic case for the cost effectiveness of early interventions over later remedial programmes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, prevention is better than cure.

All this evidence points categorically to the conclusion reached by Nick Clegg himself in response to the Allen report: “The foundations of a fairer, more socially mobile society are laid in the critical early years of life.”

If the Coalition is genuinely serious in its desire to significantly improve social mobility and create a fairer society, it should therefore be protecting and even prioritising early years spending, rather than slashing it. Ring-fencing school spending -– although it may appease more people -– will not be enough. Continuing the blanket subsidy on travel and fuel for pensioners regardless of need will certainly do nothing to help, and a move towards means-testing would easily cover the proposed cuts to the Early Intervention Grant.

The government is certainly doing some positive things in early years -– including expanding the free pre-school offer to disadvantaged two year-olds and the recently announced piloting of universal parenting classes. However, the IFS projections indicate quite clearly that there are elements within government -– possibly within the Department for Education itself -– that still have not grasped the crucial importance of the early intervention agenda.

The key point is that social mobility is not in fact just a ‘social’ issue: it is also a deeply economic one. One estimate predicts that failure to improve levels of social mobility could cost the UK economy as much as £140 billion each year by 2050 in wasted potential.

We are repeatedly being told that it is necessary to address the deficit now because it is ‘unfair to burden future generations with debt’. It is surely equally unfair to burden those generations with an ossified society that is both morally and economically flawed.

The Coalition should, in effect, be prepared to put its money, however limited, where its mouth is. Its own evidence indicates clearly that the biggest differences can be made by intervening early. Slashing early years spending by over a fifth is contradictory in the extreme with a ‘guiding purpose’ of improving social mobility.

* Chris Paterson is a researcher for the independent liberal think-tank CentreForum.

Lord Rennard: My Lords, does the Minister accept that it really is necessary to carry out a thorough, door-to-door, face-to-face canvass in order to ensure both the accuracy and the completeness of the electoral register? Does he accept that failure to do so not only threatens the integrity of the democratic process but could also cause problems for people trying to obtain credit? Credit agencies check that people are on the electoral register to ensure that they can have credit, and failure to maintain the register in this way could mean that people are denied credit and businesses are unable to supply goods and services. That would be damaging to the economy and to social mobility.

Lord McNally: That is an interesting point. If I may return to the central point of the question, yes, doorstep canvassing plays a vital role in ensuring that registers are complete and accurate. That is why in both 2014 and 2015 door-to-door canvassers will be used by electoral registration officers to ask people to register to vote.

Not all the exchanges were quite so serious:

Lord Kakkar: My Lords, what impact might the opportunity to vote for an elected second Chamber have on voluntary voter registration?

Lord McNally: I think that it would have them flocking to register in their millions. The opportunity and the excitement that that would generate would be almost boundless.

Last year I was probably the only MP to be elected while still living with my parents. Of course, I’d moved out of home and, like many others, had to move back again. It’s a symptom of the fact that housing policy in the UK is in crisis. We have millions of people languishing on social housing waiting lists, first-time-buyers priced out of the market and in private rented sector tenants facing increased rents with decreased security of tenure and standards.

But what are the options when it comes to the supply of and demand for housing?

1.Increase the housing supply: free up the spare bedrooms

The Intergenerational Foundation has pointed out that more than half of the over-65s live in homes with at least two spare bedrooms and overall more than a third of the housing stock has at least two spare bedrooms. Their solution is to suggest tax incentives to encourage people to move to smaller properties so that the overall supply of bedrooms is better used. A different but complimentary approach could be to increase the financial incentives to take in lodgers.

Either way, some people may object that having worked all their lives to make a home for themselves, they should not have to move or take in a stranger, which is why politically it is only carrots (such as tax incentives) rather than sticks (such as restricting the single person Council Tax discount if there are spare bedrooms) that are likely to be a runner. (However, the proposals to let councils to reduce or remove the Council Tax discounts on second homes could reduce their number and so see more intensive use of the housing stock via this route.)

In the social housing sector, the government is taking some moves on the equivalent issue, by – for example – making home-swapping easier.

2. Embrace families living together

One of the causes of increased demand for housing is the average size of households falling as the tendency of families across generations to live together has fallen. For the family members wanting to move out and get a place of their own, it would not be a popular thing to say, but one option is for politicians to decide that having more members of families having to live together is not necessarily a bad thing – and even can bring some benefits, such as in the case of older people. Don’t expect any party to headline this policy at a press conference any time soon though.

3. Reduce population growth

The other part of increased demand is increased population. The question of whether government should or indeed can significantly influence net migration numbers is often picked over. Less talked about is the degree to which services such as social security and health should or should not encourage families to keep below a certain birth rate figure. It is worth noting though this written question with David Laws has asked:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what cost savings would accrue to the Exchequer from restricting (a) child benefit and (b) child tax credit to three children only for children born after 1 January 2012 in each year from 2012-13 to 2020-21; and if he will make a statement.

4. Build more council homes / social housing

The number of council houses has taken two huge hits in the last thirty years: first the introduction by Margaret Thatcher of right to buy, and then the collapse under Labour in the building of new council houses. In 2010, there were only two new council houses built per Parliamentary constituency on average. Ask almost any MP about the housing casework they get at their surgeries and you will see how strikingly low that number is.

The current government set out plans last autumn to build 150,000 new social homes over the next four years, which will see the first net increase in the social housing stock for thirty years. That is a very welcome break from recent history but still leaves plenty of suggestions being made about how to fund more construction, such as the IPPR’s recent suggestion that council pension funds could be encouraged to invest more in social housing developments or the possible expansion of the Green Investment Bank’s role into providing more green housing.

5. Make it easier to build new housing

Most of the debate on this centres around the planning rules, but there is another, lesser talked about option. Even in areas of high housing demand and high property prices such as large parts of London, there are patches of semi-derelict land left that way for years and where building on it would make the site considerably nicer.

A long-standing Liberal Democrat policy has been to alter the perverse incentive in the VAT system, whereby building a new home gets less taxed than renovating an existing one.

Moreover, any form of tax on land values would strongly encourage getting land back into use as quickly as possible. Incentives could also be provided via financial support to land owners who cannot afford to (re)develop land.

But this is all also partly an issue of tracing land ownership, which can be remarkably complicated. I’m many months into an attempt to track down the owner of a patch of land near me, not because I want to build on it but in order to find out who is legally responsible for the dumped rubbish on it. The principle is however the same: tracking down owners can be hard and often there is only limited incentive for anyone to put that effort in. As a result, land continues to stand unused.

The government’s New Homes Bonus goes some way towards tacking that by providing councils with a stronger financial incentive to get empty homes brought back into use and new homes to be built.

At some point this merges over into…

6. Require landowners to use, let or sell property

Around 350,000 homes in the UK have been empty for more than six months. Given the IPPR’s prediction of a housing shortfall in England of 750,000 homes by 2025, getting a realistic proportion of those homes into use would not solve all the problems but could be a very major contributor.

So far the legal power to force land to be brought back into use are fair limited, with only 60 orders having been issued by local councils under the scheme brought in by Labour to let them force empty properties back into use.

What is your views on these options: which appeal the most or the least?

Nick Clegg launched the government’s social mobility strategy last April, promising to ‘open the doors of opportunity’ to children from disadvantaged homes as they move into adulthood. Children from poor homes are half as likely to achieve five good GCSEs as their better off peers, and they account for less than one in a hundred Oxbridge students. Clegg rightly pointed out that this is both unfair and damaging for the competitiveness of our economy.

A key way to improve social mobility is to raise the educational achievement of children from poor backgrounds, and help more of them go to university. This goal is at the core of the government’s social mobility strategy, which sets out to narrow the huge difference in results between pupils from different social class backgrounds. People with degrees on average earn 85% more than those who leave school after GCSE, and are far more likely to work in the top professions such as law and medicine.

But recent figures from a number of different sources are all pointing in the wrong direction for improving social mobility. Most strikingly, we learned this week that applications for university courses are down 12% on this time last year, largely as a result of the rise in tuition fees. Of particular concern is the dramatic decline in mature students applying to university – which has seen a fall of over a fifth since last year. Studying later in life is often the best way of enabling people to improve their lot, especially if they have been let down by their education in childhood.

Meanwhile, eyebrows are being raised at the publication of the latest school exam data. Pupils at independent schools are three times more likely to achieve an A* grade at A-level than students from comprehensive schools. Given the top universities now require most applicants to have A* grades, it doesn’t seem likely that the gulf between the number of private and state school students getting into top universities will be closing anytime soon. This situation is likely to get worse following today’s revelation that spending on sixth form students is facing bigger cuts than other areas of the education system.

Dig into the data for GCSEs, and other worrying trends emerge. If children from disadvantaged homes are to get into top universities to study for subjects like physics or engineering, then they will have to take ‘hard’ subjects at GCSE and A-level – because it is these subjects that are preferred by admissions tutors. But only 20% of pupils in comprehensive schools took individual science GCSEs last year, with the remainder taking a ‘combined science’ course that leaves them poorly prepared to study the science subjects at A-level. This in-turn means they are less likely to go to a top university, as well as reducing the all important science base of the nation. Compare this to grammar schools – where 70% of pupils are studying individual science GCSEs – and the size of the gap that has to be closed becomes clear.

Of course going to university is not the only way to improve social mobility. There is much that can be done by employers to help open doors for young people to move straight into work, or for people to study in further education colleges. But it doesn’t look like the labour market holds many answers given its current state, with youth unemployment the highest it has been for a generation and the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training about to top one million.

With all the underlying indicators pointing to reduced social mobility, action needs to be taken to both stimulate jobs for young people and improve educational achievement. IPPR is calling for a job guarantee for young people who have been out of work for more than twelve months; a strengthening of apprenticeships and vocational qualifications through much greater involvement of employers ; making the pupil premium an ‘entitlement’ to guarantee that the extra cash reaches the pupils who need it, and a school accountability framework that focuses on the progression of all children, not just those achieving grades C or above. Taken together, these actions could form the basis of a proper offer for young people, and a strategy for raising social mobility with real impact.

Jonathan Clifton is Research Fellow at IPPR.

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email voice@libdemvoice.org if you are interested in contributing.