As I walk around Salford I can see the tangible improvements in my city, and I feel proud that it is a Labour government and council that has made it happen. Improvements to schools, to our hospitals and GPs, cleaner and safer parks, more police, Sure Start centres and repairs to people’s homes. The building work on the site of MediaCity is progressing, where soon the BBC will establish a major media operation, bringing new opportunities for local young people.
I’m not pretending that Salford is some kind of socialist utopia. Of course there are still difficulties. People work hard and some lead tough lives. Many people do not get the opportunities they deserve to get on. But on any objective analysis, the condition of the public spaces and public services in my home town, and cities and towns across Britain, has improved thanks to Labour.
Pride should not be confused with satisfaction or complacency. The organising principle of social democracy is that we march towards the socialist society, but we never arrive, because as times change there will always be new challenges. The trick is to ensure that our values of social justice and individual liberty are applied afresh to every new challenge. It is no admission of failure to acknowledge that working people are not getting the opportunities they deserve after 10 years of Labour; it is a statement of our ambition.
That’s why the Labour government is redoubling its efforts to increase social mobility, to allow people to be the best they can be, to unlock their talents and to do away with whatever barriers hold them back. It is a scandal that children from the poorest backgrounds have the narrowest horizons; that thousands grow up in neighbourhoods where few, if any, adults are in work; that people with talents and aptitudes are not able to fulfil them. This fundamental unfairness is what many of us came into Labour politics to tackle.
Of course, we are rightly focused on giving people real help now, and through the tough times ahead. But when the upturn comes, we need to ensure we come out stronger than before. That’s why we should welcome Labour’s white paper on new opportunities which the prime minister, Liam Byrne and I launched in January. We need to allow talented youngsters, no matter where they live or what their parents do, to benefit from the billion high-skilled jobs that the global economy will create in the coming years.
We must continue to invest in our cities, our transport system and our public services. And most of all, we must invest in childcare, in early years, in schools and in apprenticeships so that there is a ladder of opportunity for today’s toddlers who must be tomorrow’s engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs or community leaders.
It is a fundamental misunderstanding to think, as some on the left do, that the answer is to simply ameliorate the conditions of the poorest people through enhanced benefits or better council houses. The answer lies in opportunities to work, to learn, to progress through a career, to provide for a family and to be a role model for the next generation. That’s the real Labour way.
A look at the Tories’ policies tells us what a Cameron government would mean: cuts to the programmes which offer social mobility. They would cut funding for children’s centres (£200m per year from Sure Start), for schools (£4.5bn from the secondary school rebuilding programme), and in workplace skills (£1bn Train to Gain).
The battleground for the period leading up to the general election is increasingly clear: Labour on the side of the ambitious, hardworking majority, who want to get on and do well. And the Tories who would do nothing to help them.
Sadly, Hazel Blears forgets that a quarter of the children who are living in poverty are in working families. Work in this country fails to create an escape from poverty social mobility. Perhaps they are not working hard enough, perhaps they should do double shifts?
Both Trixie and Hazel Blears are right. While low pay is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed, ultimately the way out of poverty has to be through employment. This does, however, raise an interesting question, in these times of crisis, about the government’s potential role as ’employer of last resort’…
The way out of poverty is necessarily through employment, but that may not always be a sufficient condition. It’s got to be quality employment through quality education.
There are 7.5 million unskilled low paying jobs in our economy, and that figure will remain the same by 2020.
Somebody has to do those jobs, and the people unlucky enough to do those hard jobs, should not be living in poverty.
Social Mobility isn’t enough to create a fair society.
Redistribution of wealth to end the poverty of people in low paid work is necessary, because these unskilled low paid jobs aren’t going away from our economy.