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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.