I was lucky 25 years ago. Now I want to open up opportunities to all

Helping hand: a young Nick Clegg with his banker father, Nicholas
12 April 2012

I have been lucky. When I was a teenager I benefited from securing a summer holiday job, partly thanks to a helping hand from my father.

For most people that kind of fortunate start in life is an unusual one. But when I was debating the issue in Parliament yesterday I was surrounded by people who have either worked as interns or employ them in their offices, many not hired by a fair and open process.

In politics, as in the media, the City, and many other popular professions, who you know is increasingly becoming more important than what you know. I believe that has to change.

I know some people believe that my own good fortune more than 20 years ago should somehow disqualify me from commenting on this issue or trying to fix it. I don't see it that way.

In today's Britain how well you do still depends to a great extent on where you're born, the school you go to, or the jobs your parents do. This is the issue known as social mobility. And despite huge amounts of government spending there has been no progress.

This is important not just because it is unfair but also because it is bad for Britain. If companies in London are to compete with the best in the world, they need to be confident they have the best people working for them, whatever their background.

Yesterday I set out how the Government plans to deal with social mobility. It is a complex issue that previous governments have failed to fix. That must not stop us from taking on the problem. We are focusing on areas such as free early years education, a pupil premium for disadvantaged students, a national scholarship fund and more apprenticeships.

We also need to help children realise that top jobs are not just for everyone else; that if they work hard then no door will be closed. So we are working with the Education Employers Taskforce to get 100,000 people to talk in schools, and I and my Cabinet colleagues are looking forward to joining them.

And yes, we are going to make internships fairer. Firms like KPMG, Allen & Overy and PricewaterhouseCoopers have already signed up to our business compact. Whitehall internships will also be opened up so young people of all incomes can afford to get vital work experience.

This will take time, and I'm sure that it will be controversial. But it's the right thing to do.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in