Social mobility strategy not just for the poor, says Nick Clegg

Deputy PM says he wants to help not just poorest families but also 'millions of middle-income parents not rich enough to insulate their children against life's misfortunes'
Nick Clegg, who will urge firms to make internships more accessible to disadvantaged youngsters
Nick Clegg, who will today urge firms to make internships more accessible to disadvantaged youngsters in a bid to improve social mobility. Photograph: Geoff Kirby/PA

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has said the government will aim to end the culture of people being given internships because of "who they know, rather than what they know", as part of a social mobility strategy to be launched on Tuesday.

Speaking prior to the launch, Clegg admitted that improving social mobility was not going to happen "in a few months or a few years", but stressed that he wanted the present government, and future governments, to be held to account over their attempts to "make Britain a fairer and more socially mobile place".

The strategy is designed to help "the majority of people" move up the ladder of opportunity, Clegg said.

The push to open up internships is one of the measures outlined to ensure career progression is less dependent on "who your father's friends are".


As one part of a many-pronged effort to narrow differences in achievement between social groups, a number of firms have been enlisted to give people without family connections experience in competitive fields of work. The government will encourage firms to use name-blank and school-blank applications.

The government will signal that legislation on the payment of the national minimum wage should be taken more seriously. People will be encouraged to blow the whistle on unpaid internships.

Clegg said the Liberal Democrat party was putting its own internship system "on a much more transparent footing" so young people have the same opportunities rather than the wealthy and well-connected being favoured.

He said: "All of them will have a fair chance of getting these internships, and it's not just because someone has met someone in the tennis club or the golf club, and they've had a whisper in their ear."

The Conservative party chair, Lady Warsi, will also announce that the civil service will end informal internships before 2012. They will all then be advertised on the government's website.

In advance of the strategy's launch, Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said in a joint article in Tuesday's Telegraph that many families are seeing their aspirations for their children dashed because private education is out of their reach and they lack the right connections.

Along with pledging to improve social mobility among those from poorer backgrounds, they said millions of middle-income parents were also not rich enough to insulate their children against life's misfortunes.

"We want a society in which success is based on what you know, not who you know or which family you are born into," they wrote. "So our social mobility drive is aimed at helping the majority of people to move up the rungs of the ladder of opportunity."

Denying suggestions that the strategy would involve "social engineering", they cast their drive to open up internships as a way of preventing "the lucky few grabbing all the best chances".

"This is mobility for the middle, not just the bottom," they added.

Research shows that, in Britain, the influence of parental income on earnings is among the strongest in the OECD. Parental income has more than one and a half times the impact on male earnings in Britain than in Canada, Germany or Sweden.

The strategy is expected to include seven annual indicators to help the government monitor social mobility.


"We want a fair job market based on merit, not networks. It should be about what you know, not who you know."

As part of a "business compact on social mobility", companies will be required to work with local schools, giving staff time off to mentor children.

As a result, 100,000 adults established in their careers should go into schools at least once a year to talk about their work. Firms must also advertise work experience in schools.

Other measures include the introduction of access agreements to ensure that the 90% of pupils who attend state schools have an equal chance to get into the best universities.

The universities minister, David Willetts, was criticised last week for claiming that feminism was probably "the single biggest factor" for the lack of social mobility because women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.

Willetts insisted on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he thought it "fantastic" that women have had rising opportunities over the past four decades.

"I didn't realise I was quite a crusty old figure when I read some of the media coverage," he quipped.

He added: "But on the latest statistics we have got, on one measure we have now got 45% of young women going to university, 35% of young men.

"Now, it's great that the women now have those opportunities, but it does mean we face a new challenge which is whether there are some groups of boys — young men in particular — that are being left behind."

He said the strategy pulls together the different crucial stages of people's lives when key decisions or events shape their futures, and shows "for each one of them how we are going to improve social mobility and improve opportunity".

Asked at whom the strategy was targeted , Willetts said: "It's clear that families in the middle, families living on average incomes whose children are going to a local state school, they are families that we believe clearly will gain from this approach."