Yesterday Siobhain gave a speech in Parliament about the need for all politicians to do all they can to make sure every child has the chance to get on in life, whoever they are born to and wherever they are born.
You can watch Siobhain's speech
here (at 14:54) or read it below.
It is a pleasure to follow the new hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy), whose performance was really assured. I have been in this place quite a long time and I am slightly worried that I will not be quite so assured, but I do wish to raise an issue of great importance to me and, I believe, to Members on both sides of the House—that of social mobility in the UK. By that, I mean the ability of children, wherever they are born, whoever they are born to, to get on in life and have access to the opportunities, the education and the careers that they would wish to have, regardless of their background.
I acknowledge that we live in an amazing city that has brought hope and opportunity to generations of people from all over the world. That was never brought home more to me than when watching my late, wonderful father lean over the balcony in the House of Lords to see my sister ennobled.
My dad was one of 14. He was brought up in two rooms in a bog in the middle of the west of Ireland—a beautiful and wonderful place, but a place that could not give him work, could not allow him to feed himself or to feed his family. So he came to London in 1947, like a generation of others—no different, no more exceptional—and he built our roads, and he built our offices. He never asked for anything but the opportunity to work. He met a wonderful woman, my mother, who in ’47 came to be in that first generation of nurses. Together they had two daughters, not exceptional in themselves—and I am
by far the less exceptional of the two—who have had the opportunity and the honour to become the Member for Mitcham and Morden, and to become a Member in another place. A wonderful opportunity, a wonderful city and a wonderful country.
I had parents who bestowed on me the complete and unwavering desire to work hard, believing that nothing came but from work for those of us who were born to nothing—believing that work enables you to support yourself and your family, but it is also a moral duty to help your community. Also, as we now know, work helps us stay healthy. But what worries me is that for the generations that come after me—particularly, I am sad to say, the white working-class kids in my constituency—the doors that were open to me are closing.
By most measures, the UK falls behind other countries on social mobility. Alan Milburn’s recent report on the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that we are trailing behind most developed nations, and there appears to be a stronger relationship between parental background and children’s future income in Britain than in any other country in Europe. The report also found that top jobs in Britain across a range of sectors go overwhelmingly to those educated in the private sector: 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces officers, 55% of permanent secretaries and 50% of Members of the House of Lords all attended independent schools.
I do not have with me the figures showing what those percentages are in the media, but I know that they are even more concentrated on groups of more privileged people. That is why I am delighted that my great friend Michael Foster—who was the Labour candidate in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle—after seeing the riots on TV a few years ago, became aware of how few black and Asian reporters there were on our TV screens and set up Creative Access, a charity to find work experience and internships for black and Asian young people that paid £16,000 a year. Eighty per cent. of the hundreds of black and Asian young people that he has got into work are now in permanent jobs in the media. Michael is now extending that, understanding how low is the representation of white working-class young people in our media, and he is
piloting projects in our sixth forms in London, including, thankfully, in my constituency, from next year.
Although these great initiatives happen, we are lagging so far behind. At times when professions desperately need to reach out to people from different backgrounds and be more representative in order to be most effective, the doors are being closed. Take the example of the police force. It took me weeks and months in the previous Session of Parliament to make hon. Members from all parties understand that currently, any young person wanting to apply to join the police force has to undertake a course, with private tutors, costing £1,000. That is the certificate in knowledge of policing. Being in a police force used to be an opportunity, in the main for working-class men, to get on, get a job and move up the ladder. Today the doors are being closed to those who want to become police officers. The bobby tax probably deprives us of great people who could make connections in their own communities to help
policing and bring down crime.
We also know about the number of employers who ask for work experience when assessing job applicants. Parents often tell me that their children want a job but cannot get on the job ladder without that experience. Too often they cannot get the work experience they need unless they have contacts and the money to work unpaid. On and on it goes, round and round in a circle.
I started a work experience scheme in my constituency when I realised that more young people from outside my constituency than inside it were applying to work with me. I have had the great opportunity to get more than 60 local employers together and put together a booklet of opportunities, which
I send to all my local young people. Only today, when I visited Benedict primary school, I met Safira Hassan, who told me that she had taken up one of the opportunities in that booklet and as a result is now working full time as a teaching assistant for challenging children. She hopes to go on to be a drama
therapist. Helping individuals in that way is the real excitement of having this job.
Some sectors are particularly restrictive in the number of obstacles that they put in front of those from less privileged backgrounds. Alan Milburn’s recent report found that just 7% of new medical students came from the bottom three socioeconomic groups, partly due to the difficulty that those without family connections have in accessing work experience in the sector. Many bright young people come to my advice surgery asking me to help, and I am grateful to Professor Field, the director of research at south-west London elective orthopaedic centre, who regularly gives me the opportunity to enable young people in my constituency to get work experience.
We all know that the cuts to careers advice services in schools under the coalition Government further widened the gap between those who have the knowledge and contacts to get on and those from less privileged backgrounds who have great potential. The rapid expansion of unpaid internships is another factor restricting opportunities. The Sutton Trust has found that a third of graduate internships are unpaid, and that three-month internships in London in which expenses are provided cost about £3,000 to complete. We cannot allow it to be the case that only those who can afford to work unpaid end up
being able to get their foot on the first rung of the ladder in many careers. What if a young person who might go on to discover a cure for cancer cannot afford to do an internship with a cancer research charity, or cannot get the work experience needed to apply to medical school?
Much of a child’s opportunity is, of course, determined by the quality of their education at a young age. There has been discussion in recent years about the stark correlation between economic inequality and low educational achievement. Of course, there are huge challenges facing many disadvantaged groups of children, but the below-average achievement of white working-class children remains static. Last year, just 31% of white children on free school meals achieved five A* to C-grade GCSEs. I am extremely proud of the work that the last Labour Government did to close that gap, and I will for ever be grateful to Lord Harris of Peckham, a peer not of my political persuasion but one who has taken two of the most underperforming schools in my constituency and transformed them, particularly for young people on free school meals.
In 2009, only 28% of students at Harris Academy Morden—then Bishopsford school—achieved five A* to C grades including English and maths. By 2013, that had doubled to 57%. In 2007, only 28% of Harris Academy Merton students achieved five A* to C grades, but by 2013 that had nearly trebled to 75%. That means real chances and opportunities, and I do not understand why the Conservatives want to make schools that are already achieving become academies.
We should concentrate on those schools that are underperforming, because they will have children from the most-excluded groups.
I have so much to say, but I do not want to deny other hon. Members the right to contribute. We all as individual Members have a role to play in helping people get on the ladder, but Parliament and the Government have nothing less than a moral imperative.