Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)

My Lords, there is hardly a more important subject than the future of our young people and their contribution to the wealth of the nation and to their own happiness. I was privileged to lead a one-off committee last year on social mobility. What the committee learned was sobering and shocking, as a result of lots of evidence that we received. Our remit was to look at how education and work could be better integrated. This is a complex subject—we have just heard in the wind-up of the last debate references to young people—which covers a range of things. Therefore, our first decision was that we would focus on four areas: the importance of place, or where the issues are arising; NEETs, which is a horrible expression meaning those young people not in education, employment or training; the particular problems of those aged between 16 and 18; and data. I hope that not many of your Lordships will criticise us for the things that we did not cover. Some may have been more important but to have covered them all we would have needed a full standing committee on the subject. Early years, mental health, housing, the benefits system, the care system, the effect of Covid, social media, levers for economic growth, attitudes to work—any one of those could have kept us busy. However, despite what we learned being sobering and shocking, it is encouraging that there is now plenty of public and political focus on these issues. We heard a number of options for definitions of social mobility. We ended up with working on the basis that where you are born, the circumstances in which you are born and the income of your parents should not determine everything that happens in the rest of your life. As far as possible, it is the responsibility of all Governments to provide circumstances in which our citizens can thrive from an early age. Several witnesses said that social mobility is not about fishing out of the education system bright, young, talented but disadvantaged people, sending them to a Russell Group university and expecting them to be earning £100,000 as a lawyer within five minutes. We were told that by a number of people and the committee agreed. Since we reported, there has been a lot of broad policy and HMG initiatives on this subject, and I will talk about some of them later, but we found it very compelling that different solutions are required all over the country—in coastal areas, remote rural areas and inner cities. Inner cities are also different; problems in the centre of Bristol may be different from those in Birmingham. Therefore, whatever frameworks or initiatives HMG have, we must recognise that the best solutions come from the people in the areas where the problems are, who know those problems—the transport issues, the local education, what the local jobs are and so on—or who can help create those job opportunities and remove barriers. In a moment, I will talk about a really encouraging visit that we had to Blackpool, but one of our recommendations, building on what I just said, is that local partnerships must be the answer. I do not wish to pick out particular evidence, but I remember being very struck, as were other members of the committee, by one area—I cannot remember where—where the local fire brigade had noticed the NEETs and taken the initiative to do something. We should not prescribe that it has to be the further education college, if there is one, or the DWP: it has to be a combination of people helping. Our other recommendations are to do with education. It is striking how many people fail maths and English who are then barred from further progress at GCSE. We went to Blackpool, where the further education college has a drop-in centre by the front door to give extra coaching in this area, but the committee tended to believe that the presentation of maths to students who understand its functionality and value in today’s internet-enabled world needed some fresh thinking. Also striking was that the loan that someone from a low-income family gets to go to university has not risen for seven years—or had not at the time of our report—thereby barring a number of people. At that stage—and things are beginning to change—the committee also felt that there needed to be greater scope for progress on creative, technical and vocational subjects in education. Career advice seemed pretty patchy. The trailblazers looked like a good proposal; we hoped that the arrangement in which the Minister straddles the DWP and the Department for Education would continue. Data again needs improvement, including the ability to share, so that we know what the problems are. At the time we did our report, there were also particular problems with care leavers making the transition to work. We heard evidence that, to get enough to pay for rent and the transport to get to work, they would have to give up their accommodation allowance, so there is a Catch-22 there. We thought that the growth and skills levy should be extended and that we needed datasets on parental income. I mentioned Blackpool earlier. Blackpool comes near the bottom of most indicators of social mobility, employment and a range of other issues. But, partly led by the Social Mobility Commission—I applaud its excellent work in this area and it gave us great help in working out what we were going to do—the people in Blackpool have created a fantastic partnership. It is already beginning to have results, but there is a long way to go. It involves the local authority, the further education college, employers, the DWP, charities and students. Listening to students about their experiences and what those in education are doing to help those in the NEET category was inspirational. Again, we were encouraged to think in terms of various tiers of people who are not in education, employment and training, which ranges from those who are very nearly ready for employment, if the jobs are available, to those who are so far away that they are without the concept of what jobs are and the social skills that they need to do them—turning up on time and so on. The suggestion was that that group needed particular attention. To quote the Social Mobility Commission, it is “the truly disadvantaged, who get lost” in these areas. We had some super evidence, including from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, from whom we are going to hear later, who influenced us and is quoted in our report. We had 58 pieces of written evidence and heard 54 witnesses—students, employers, educationalists, university professors, training providers, further education colleges, academics and Government Ministers. I am not going to pick out anything, except to say that a particularly poignant piece of evidence came from an academic studying NEETs. She told us how she went to interview a young man in this category. He was thrilled to see her, as she was the first person who had taken an interest in his future. He thought that she was coming to offer him a job, but she was coming to do academic research. I thank the members of the committee, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, whose proposal this was. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, thanking the clerks on the committee whose report was debated previously. Anybody in this House knows what fantastic support we have: Andrea, Bruce and Emily helped us enormously. I also thank the committee itself: everybody turned up, contributed and did the maximum that they could to help produce a report of which we could be proud. Before I end, I need to inject a slightly grumpy note. I do so reluctantly, given that the Government are doing a lot in this area, but we did a lot of hard work. The Government’s response, rather than two months, took eight. The response was issued a day after the Summer Recess and—to be slightly personally grumpy—the committee was chaired by me, not by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, as the Government’s response said. Having said that, I know that there is a problem with managing business, but I plead again—as other Select Committee chairs have before—that when Members of this House do extensive, careful, thorough work, which takes a lot of time and costs the taxpayer substantial amounts of money, their reports are taken seriously and given adequate time for debate. We should not experience what this committee did. I already mentioned the flurry of government initiatives in this area. Before we reported, we had Charlie Mayfield’s review Keep Britain Working and the work being done, although it was not complete, by the Curriculum and Assessment Review. Since we reported, we have had the interim report from Alan Milburn, some changes on arrangements for apprenticeships, job placements, youth hubs, the youth jobs grant and a jobs graduate scheme. These clearly have value severally, but—and I have not been able to discuss this with the committee because this all happened after we submitted our report—the concerns I have are whether this is co-ordinated, whether data is being collected on the value of these initiatives and their success, whether there is the right proportion of direction from central government and the freedom for local initiatives, and whether they cover enough of the country. It was clear to us that it was easier to make progress where there are combined authorities than in areas that are not covered. There are quite a lot of gaps in the country that are not covered at this level. I will probably have more to say in summing up but, at this stage, I beg to move.