Sonia Purnell’s

PERSPECTIVES

Social Immobility

The UK is a country bursting with talent, innovation, and creativity – but a lot of it is wasted. If you are born poor or with limited horizons to make use of those qualities, that is more than likely how you will die.

Quite apart from the crushing personal cost of our woeful lack of social mobility, there is the enormous damage it does to our national life and economy. How can we grow and thrive if we don’t grow all of our people but continually give opportunities to the same old gene pool while sidelining the rest?

A 2024 report by retailer Co-op and think tank Demos suggested the economy was £19 billion a year smaller because of the UK’s systemic failure to promote social mobility in the workplace – meaning the Exchequer loses nearly £7 billion a year in tax revenue (about 1p on income tax).

Other countries do it way better – notably the Nordic nations but also France, Germany, and Ireland. According to the Global Social Mobility Index of 2020 (it’s likely we’ve slipped further since), the UK ranked an unimpressive 21st.