Lord Willetts (Con)

My Lords, I congratulate the committee on an excellent report. I am sure it was the right approach to focus on a specific set of problems, and it is a very well-judged collection that is put to us to debate today. Personally, I have always thought that the biggest single problem we face in social mobility is the prospect for those 16 year-olds who do not get good GCSEs. That is where the most shocking waste and loss of opportunity occurs. I would like to pick up on three specific points in the report. First, there is the brief discussion of work experience in paragraph 50 and elsewhere. There is an extraordinary phenomenon at the moment: T-levels include a requirement for 45 days of work experience and have significant funding for employers to provide that work experience. That is having the effect of pushing all the work experience options into a relatively small programme and number of beneficiaries. Does the Minister see the case instead, in so far as there is public funding for work experience, for spreading it more widely and more equitably, rather than it being so specifically linked to T-levels? Secondly, I should refer to higher education. Higher education is the only stage of education where the kids from the poor areas outperform. It is the one stage where they catch up a bit. The report is absolutely right to identify the importance of maintenance loans for them. It is still the case that kids from poorer areas are less likely to go to university. I always enjoy it when the Minister takes the opportunity of these Lords debates to reflect on policy. There is a lot of talk at the moment on restricting and controlling the numbers of people going to university. Does she agree with me that the danger, when you control numbers, is that it is the marginal students from the tough backgrounds who lose out? The evidence is that those cases where it is the marginal students—those who might just have gone or just did not go—are where you can do the best and most rigorous empirical research. That research shows that the students in those circumstances who do go enjoy far better work opportunities and life outcomes. Finally, and third on my list, it is great that the report has such a meaty chapter on data. We need to link data to have proper social mobility research, of the sort that Raj Chetty has conducted in the US. But we do not just need it for research; it is also necessary for the place agenda, which is another strong theme in the report. At the moment there are many people providing services to young NEETs and others who are not totally confident about what data they can share with other bodies, including other public bodies that are also trying to help these people. Often, there is overcautious legal advice about GDPR obligations, so data is not being shared. There is a role for the Government in signalling clearly to those players that they can share data.