Progressive solutions needed to tackle multiple deprivation in Glasgow North East

By William Bain MP

The recent University and College Union analysis of the number of adults without any educational qualifications across Britain has provoked genuine concern and debate about inequality and social mobility in our country. Over 12% of Scots lack any formal qualifications, but in seats such as Glasgow North East with high levels of inter-generational poverty and unemployment, some 35% of adults are without any qualifications at all. Local schoolchildren in Dennistoun and Robroyston recently lobbied me to ensure that their classmates in Africa have the right to an empowering education. The tragedy is that through a combination of social breakdown, lack of work, the absence of aspiration among the young, and expensive childcare, it has almost become acceptable to consider such inequality as inevitable in Glasgow.

In an economy where the shift from unskilled and semi-skilled labour to knowledge-based and high skill jobs is continuing apace, ending this situation is vital if we are to avoid not just a lost generation of young people without the skills or chance for work as in the 1980s and 1990s, but entire communities becoming dislocated from society, and locked into a downwards spiral of despair, poverty, ill-health, and apathy.

In the late 1990s, Labour made a conscious decision to follow the best practice from the Clinton administration in the US, and introduced a system of tax credits targeted at the poorest but offering middle class families a stake in fairness too. Child poverty fell in the first two terms of the Labour government, and was falling again by the time of the general election in 2010. In 2015, a different fiscal landscape will exist, and our aim will be to draw upon the achievements of progressive governments across the globe in building a decent society based on the principles of equality and responsibility, but focused on increasing living standards for the poorest, guaranteeing work opportunities for the long-term unemployed, the challenge of making childcare more accessible and affordable, and plugging the social mobility gap between sustainable jobs for the future and the reduced opportunities the poor and unskilled experience in austerity Britain. This week, the IPPR has published proposals for a system of National Salary Insurance and universal childcare. Bold reforms such as these, a living wage, and a form of Universal Credit, which helps rather than penalises the low-paid and single parents, hold out the prospect of a welfare state based on social protection with reciprocal responsibilities.

Australia introduced a jobs guarantee for the long-term jobless in the mid-1990s as part of a progressive package of welfare reforms. We must do the same here in Britain, to provide the tools to tackle inter-generational joblessness. Any Bill of Rights building upon the Human Rights Act should contain such a commitment to bind future governments into policies to ensure the right to work, so that this issue is put beyond mere party interest, and is part of a generation long poverty reduction programme. As the HSBC study on The Future of Business confirms, the Glasgow and Scottish economies require diversification over the next decade towards new environmental industries and the games industry in which we have the talent and potential to be world leaders. Policy on skills and education should meet this economic shift.

The guarantee of a job paying a living wage for the long-term jobless must be at the heart of any welfare reform that empowers people in communities like the north and east of Glasgow. Although UK and Scottish unemployment have fallen recently, the Office for Budget Responsibility expects both to rise this year and next, and unemployment in Glasgow North East actually rose in the year to July. Much remains to be done on the income disparities among the very richest and the very poorest. The Resolution Foundation have recently established that in 1977, of every £100 of value generated by the UK economy, £16 was paid in wages to people in the lowest five income deciles, but by 2010, that had fallen by 26% to only £12. With the inclusion of bonus payments for the wealthiest, only £10 in every £100 generated went in wages to the least well-off. These trends will have accelerated in the last twelve months.

We must be creative in our thinking on skills and the education system. There are too few incentives for people to study or improve their skills after their mid-twenties, not only to improve their job prospects or to enhance their earning power, but to improve their wellbeing and quality of life. In north and east Glasgow, schoolteachers tell me the biggest enemy in pupil attainment is apathy in the home and a lack of aspiration. There are too few role models to draw upon in local communities, and links between schools, colleges and universities must improve. We must break down the barriers which insulate the talented in poor communities from taking life-changing opportunities. As a university lecturer, I found one of the best ways to show pupils that they were talented enough to go to University was to visit schools and offer mini-classes. Schools in poorer communities need the most passionate, cleverest and committed people to teach in them. The job of helping turn around the prospects of disempowered young people through education must count for more than a trader involved in commodity speculation. We need our best graduates for this task, and we need to reward them accordingly, following initiatives elsewhere such as Teach First. We need bolder leadership in our schools to refuse to tolerate a culture of underachievement and apathy towards children’s education, through introducing education contracts between schools, pupils, and their parents.

A transformation in education, skills, and the way we look at work and welfare are required to tackle these inequalities. The education and social mobility conference I am hosting at North Glasgow College on August 26th will be the start of that process. It may take a generation, but politicians and civic society must begin the task now to save thousands of Glaswegians from a future unworthy of their great talents and abilities.