News reaches the Voice that Nick Clegg is to establish a new commission to look into social mobility in Britain. He has secured expert help from Martin Narey, who chairs the End Child Poverty Coalition and is the Chief Exec of Barnados.
Clegg said:
“In 2007, a child born into deprivation is more likely to inherit his or her parents’ disadvantage than at any time in our recent past. It is utterly unacceptable that by the age of seven, a bright but poor child will be overtaken at school by a child who was struggling in pre-school years but is from a more affluent background. I want to know why it is that Britain’s low levels of social mobility compare unfavourably with almost every other developed nation. Children should be free to realise their aspirations and not be held back by the circumstances of their birth. “
UPDATE: Further details are included in the story on the Liberal Democrat website.
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12 Comments
Hmmm, it will be interesting to see how much of the ECPC’s agenda the Commission ends up recommending.
http://andymayer.blogspot.com/2008/01/social-mobility-commission-conclusions.html
“I want to know why it is that Britain’s low levels of social mobility compare unfavourably with almost every other developed nation.”
Oh dear oh dear.
If we haven’t figured that out yet then we have a long road ahead of us…
It’s not an easy question to “figure out” answers to in any way. I hope this commission goes somewhere – there’s plenty of information today about what’s wrong, but actually getting solutions is tricky.
I think Andy’s post is interesting as well – some of the ECPC stuff he cites is weak.. I’m sure we can do better. The discussion is about social mobility rather than “poverty”, which hopefully gives us something which we can all agree on.
One of the problems is low pay. Low paid people in the UK have to compete with labour in poorer countries where the pay is even lower in order for their jobs to be competitive and therefore viable.
In other words, there is a race to the bottom.
I would be interested to know how to resolve this.
I think that we’re going to have to be somewhat more sophisticated than just blaming low pay. Having a bunch of 20 year olds on minimum wage working in Tesco in no way is a problem to social mobility – it’s being forever stuck on low pay which is.
I personally think that talking about forces of competition in open markets pushing pay down is going down a blind alley – aside from it actually producing productivity up and changing the nature of jobs what’s more interesting is what kind of jobs and industries the country supports, how people progress through their careers and what challenges there are to people on low pay gaining additional skills.
I agree Peter, there’s a worrying whiff of having the government more and more involved in setting pay in some of the statements by the ECPC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2234428,00.html
“Kate Green, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, warned that work often amounted to a new poverty trap.”
There’s something in this if you’re forced to dead-end work by circumstance when taking some time to study or train would ensure better work and a career in the long run. It’d be good if the Commission looked at that.
However that’s still less of a poverty trap than staying at home on benefits when you can work.
Educate your way out of poverty is only ever mentioned by those who aren’t working in (nearly) minimum wage jobs with degrees, I notice. When I worked at Morrisons, about a third of the checkout operators in my store had degrees, and maybe another third were working towards them…
The reason social mobility has gone down under labour is that there is nothing that an employer can use to distinguish between candidates any more other than personal recommendation; EVERYONE has a degree these days, therefore the good jobs go to someone the employer knows or has had recommended, therefore social mobility goes down.
Now, I’m not saying that increased access to higher/further education is a bad thing, but maybe a wider variety of higher/further education would be a plan. Why does everything have to be a degree?
There must be fair life chocies for those with disability. At the moment those who do well from benifits,are make good use of are sometimes I personally feel are made to feel that they really don’t need them. How untrue is this it is the form filling, that makes you feel as though you are not worthy, yet one is entitled to it….however many do without it…. and are in the poverty trap….. many are. for lack of skills how to fill them in.
I hope Jo will tell us what the answer is! More seriously, Narey seems a good choice. Don’t forget that ECPC is a coalition of very disparate groups, so Narey may not agree with all of their recommendations. Do we know who the other commissioners are?
On a parochial level, it is nice to see a Surbiton connection: Dr Barnardo worshipped in my local church.
I wonder why social mobility is praised as if going down was desirable? For “mobility” is not always up. Is not the proper objective “equality”, as in the Preamble,together with “community”?
That is reducing bad places in society is important.
There is much more, including changing to sustainable economies, probably by great localisation, so that transport is much less.
This goes with much more work done within or between housseholds, and a new economics to describe this.
See James Robertson 1994 “Benefits & Taxes,
or his 1998 or 1999 books. He includes a citizens Income system to make taxes progressive, remove most of means testing, and the State pushing people to work (low paid) for firms – or lose benefits.
Well done Lib Dems you just earned Labour a landslide at the next council election in Sheffield, and why isn’t Clegg here in Sheffiled consulting with locals about what they would like to cut….maybe he is afraid it just might be his throat. Oh sorry he just cut his own in political terms….When will we get the right to sack MPs who let their constituants down? I fear he will be the first to go under these rules…total sellout of his own and his party’s grass roots beliefs pre election.
Lib Dem….more Tory than the Tories.