Alun Francis, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, says that Keir Starmer has no coherent plan for social mobility (Starmer has no coherent social mobility plan, says top government adviser, 21 December). That would indeed appear to be the case. But one can question how far a Labour government should be looking to the commission for guidance. What seems to not be widely recognised is that when in 2021 the commission was reconstituted by Liz Truss, as the then minister for women and inequalities, it took on a highly politicised form. Of its six current members, four have, or have had, Conservative party affiliations.
The commission’s recently published annual report for 2025 provides some useful information on various matters, including regional differences in opportunity structures, youth unemployment and the Neet (not in education, employment or training) problem that the chair now emphasises. However, what also has to be noted from his foreword to the report is the distinct rightwing slant on social mobility that was initiated by his predecessor as chair, Katharine Birbalsingh, and that he maintains.
Significant here is the attempt to play down the problem of the persisting very low chances of long-range social mobility between the wage-earning working classes (classes 6 and 7 in the National Statistics socio-economic classification) and the higher-level professional and managerial salariat (class 1), well documented in sociological research and a major source of talent wastage – apart from any considerations of fairness.
But, the chair claims, this is the “wrong problem” because it should not be assumed that such disparities in mobility chances “should be equalised”, and because “too much attention” is spent on the “small number of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who can get into elite occupations”. It appears to have escaped Mr Francis’s notice that it is precisely the small numbers that are the problem.
John Goldthorpe
Emeritus fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford University
• I disagree with the very idea of having a social mobility plan. The term itself captures the essence of what is wrong – class and inequality, and the notion that being upwardly mobile is the path to success. We are still a deeply class-divided society, underpinned by vast differences in economic and educational opportunity that recreate the social markers and attitudinal differences towards achievement and aspiration that constantly divide us.
We need an equality plan, not a social mobility one. As in 1997, a Labour government with a huge majority is failing to come up with a narrative that goes beyond ideas that merely tinker around the edges of the real challenge.
Christopher Tanner
St Ives, Cambridgeshire
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