Peter Saunders on BBC News on the government social mobility strategy 5 April 2011

Huw Edwards interviews Peter Saunders on BBC News 24 about the government's new 'social mobility strategy'.
The government has appointed former Labour minister Alan Milburn to oversee its 'social mobility strategy.' In 2009, Milburn published a report on mobility which described Britain as 'a closed shop society.' It was nonsense: half of us are in a different social class from the one we were born into.
Now Milburn has told Radio 4's Today programme (5 April): 'Invariably if you're born poor, you die poor.' This is an outrageous comment. The National Child Development Study found that 81% of children born to parents below the poverty line avoid poverty when they reach adulthood.
My research ('Social Mobility Myths', published by Civitas in 2010) shows that the main drivers of where we end up in life are talent and hard work. But the message Mr Milburn is sending to our young people is that you might as well give up, there's no chance of improving yourself. Is this really what the government wants us all to believe?

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News & Politics

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• social
• mobility
• interviews