Mark Glover

October 22, 2025

Mark Glover Speaking on Social Mobility Parliamentary Panel

Social Mobility Parliamentary Panel

Mark Glover

Government Communications

Key takeaway:

Social mobility is the ability of people to get on in education and work regardless of their background or where they live. At a Labour Business panel in Parliament on 16 October 2025, Mark Glover called for incentives for business, parity of esteem between academic and vocational qualifications, and stronger links between schools, colleges and employers.

It was a real pleasure to talk about social mobility on Thursday 16 October 2025 at a panel in Parliament hosted by my good friend Vijay Luthra for Labour Business,¹ with some fascinating insights from Kevin Bonavia MP,² Lee Davies and Felicity Halstead of GoodWork.³

What social mobility means, and where the UK stands

Social mobility is the ability of people to do better in education, work and income than their starting point would predict, whatever their family background or where they grow up. The Social Mobility Commission’s State of the Nation 2024 report shows why it remains a live issue:⁴

At age five, there is a gap of around 20 percentage points in reaching a “good level of development” between children eligible for free school meals and their classmates.
About 30% of children in the UK live in relative poverty after housing costs, a figure that has risen since 2012.
There is progress too. In 2014, young people from higher professional backgrounds were 3.9 times more likely to go to university than those from lower working-class backgrounds. By 2022, that had narrowed to 2.2 times.

The Commission now measures conditions across 203 local authority areas rather than 41 regions, and the local picture varies widely. Where you grow up still shapes where you end up.

The points I raised

Geography. Low-income people’s access to jobs depends heavily on where they live. Good jobs cluster in cities, and transport costs and journey times put them out of reach for many people in towns and outlying estates. Social mobility policy has to be place-based as well as national.

Incentives for business. Employers are the ones who open the door to a first job, an apprenticeship or a promotion. Government can make it easier for them to do more, for example by recognising firms that recruit from under-represented groups and by making skills funding simpler to use.

Parity of esteem. Academic and vocational qualifications should carry equal weight. A strong technical route is not second best, and employers, parents and schools need to treat it that way.

Support for colleges. Further education colleges are often the most direct route into skilled work for young people and for adults who are retraining. They need stable funding and closer partnerships with local employers.

State schools and business. State schools deserve serious investment and strong links with business, from work experience to mentoring. Those links are often what independent school pupils take for granted.

Widening aspirations. Talent is spread evenly across the country but opportunity is not. Young people need to see people like them in the careers they might aim for.

Why this matters now

The labour market is tighter for young people than it was. Job vacancies fell from 0.9 to 0.7 for every unemployed person between 2022 and 2023.⁵ When opportunities shrink, the people with the fewest connections are the first to miss out.

Since the panel, the Commission’s State of the Nation 2025 report has put the point about geography in starker terms. It found 19 local authorities that were in unfavourable positions both in 2000 to 2005 and in 2018 to 2024, mostly former industrial areas such as Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Barnsley, Stoke-on-Trent and Merthyr Tydfil, with “little sign of the gap closing” over two decades. The most favoured areas tend to be in London and the Home Counties, while several rural areas in Scotland have declining opportunities for young people.⁶

That is why business has a direct stake in this. Widening the pool of talent is good for fairness, and it is also good for growth. It is also why social mobility is at the centre of my work with the University of Glasgow, where widening participation is a core part of my role.

Wonderful to be joined by Labour Business Chair Emily Wallace⁷ and colleague Joe Cooper among a big audience for a Thursday night roundtable.