My Lords, Amendment 498 is in the name of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who has to leave early, as she has told the Grand Committee.
In a world of increasing inequality, helping improve social mobility is hugely important, as I am sure we all agree. Everyone, irrespective of their background, should be able to achieve their full potential. However, the UK has one of the poorest rates of social mobility in the developed world, which should be a concern for us all. This means that people born into low-income families, regardless of their talent or hard work, do not have the same access to opportunities as those born into more privileged circumstances. In other words, your social background still impacts on your opportunities in life.
By the age of three, poorer children are estimated to be, on average, nine months behind children from wealthier backgrounds. By 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE. Just 7% of children in the UK attend independent schools, but 30% of all A* grades at A-level are achieved by these children. Some 32% of Members of Parliament, 51% of top medics, 54% of FTSE 100 chief executives, 54% of top journalists and 70% of High Court judges went to an independent school, compared to 7% of the population. Those figures tell us something. The transition to a green economy will also bring challenges for social mobility.
Amendment 499 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock seeks to probe the disparities in cost of living between rural and urban areas. Roughly 19 million people live in England’s rural communities, some 17% of the population. Since the 1990s, Governments of all persuasions have taken the view that urban and rural areas are sufficiently different to merit different treatment in terms of public policy. However, there is a growing disconnect between urban and rural areas, with a sense of rural communities coming off second best in many areas of national decision-making and resource allocation. The last 13 years saw an austerity cuts programme to public expenditure, which exacerbated this feeling, to the point that many rural, small-town and village dwellers feel left behind and left out of national life, along with the consideration of their needs.
The decline in the provision of services, public or private, is prominent among those concerns. Some 20 years back, most small towns and villages would have had a choice of pubs, a post office, a police station, access to a doctor’s surgery, a primary school, a bank and maybe a range of shops. Most would have been on a bus route with a reasonably regular connection to large population centres, providing wider access to the facilities and services that cities and towns provide. Of course, with those connections come opportunity, aspiration and well-being. However, in many parts of Britain, especially England, those assumptions no longer hold. As I said, I grew up in central London, but I now live in West Sussex, and what surprised me was the infrequency of bus services—it is shockingly bad. If you live in a small town or village, how do you get into the bigger population centres?
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The Rural Services Network’s analysis of the Government’s levelling-up White Paper found that,
“Were England’s rural communities a distinct region, their need for Levelling Up would be greater than that of any other part”
of England. To counter the tendency for rural areas to be overlooked in favour of urban ones, the Rural Services Network called on the Government, when devising funding formulae, to include more “rural-relevant indicators”, such as workplace-based incomes and rates of employment. That is how the Government should look at this, and I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, will address this in her response.
With Amendment 504GC, my noble friend Lady Blower tries to address these issues again, looking at how we eliminate areas of illiteracy and innumeracy. We need to look at that and refocus spending on the most disadvantaged parts of the country. Of course, her amendment asks for a report from the Government, within 90 days of the Act being passed, looking at the
“impact of geographical disparities in adult literacy on levelling-up and regeneration”.
If levelling up means anything, it surely must mean looking at the areas where indicators suggest there are a range of problems, and then seeking to drag them up. So my noble friend addresses an important point here because, if you have problems with reading and writing, how will you get out there, get a job, provide for your family and make a contribution, paying your taxes and everything else? So this is really important.
I am sceptical about the Government’s levelling-up stuff but, if it means anything, it must address the issues set out in this group. I beg to move.