Social Mobility Commission

The Social Mobility Commission , formerly the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and originally the Child Poverty Commission, is an independent advisory non-departmental public body of the UK Government. Originally sponsored by the Department for Education, the commission moved to the Cabinet Office on 1 April 2021. It now operates under the sponsorship of the Minister for Women and Equalities as part of the Equality Hub, which also includes the Government Equalities Office, the Race Disparity Unit, and the Disability Unit.
The SMC was established under the Life Chances Act 2010, and its statutory role is to monitor progress in improving social mobility in the UK and to promote social mobility in England.

Current Commissioners

As of August 2024 the commissioners are:

Alun Francis, Chair
Resham Kotecha, Vice-chair
Rob Wilson, Vice-chair
Raghib Ali, Commissioner
Ryan Henson, Commissioner
Parminder Kohli, Commissioner
Tina Stowell, Commissioner
Remit

The SMC's stated aim is to "create a United Kingdom where the circumstances of birth do not determine outcomes in life". Four specific responsibilities are listed on the SMC's website. These are:

publishing an annual report setting out its views on the progress made towards improving social mobility in the United Kingdom.
promoting social mobility in England, for example, by supporting employers, the professions, universities and schools to play their part in promoting social mobility.
carrying out and publishing research in relation to social mobility.
providing advice to ministers on how to improve social mobility in England, with this advice then being published.

Until 2020, the Commission described its role as "monitor progress towards improving social mobility in the UK, and promot social mobility in England". Because education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter with each of the countries of the United Kingdom having separate systems under separate governments, the SMC has a remit to promote social mobility in England but only to monitor progress towards improving social mobility in the other countries of the United Kingdom. In Scotland an equivalent body is the Social Justice and Fairness Commission announced by Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister of the Scottish Government in April 2019.
As the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, its objective was to "monitor the progress of government and others in improving social mobility and reducing child poverty in the United Kingdom".

Creation and Renaming

The body was created by chapter 9, section 8 of the Child Poverty Act 2010, which required the establishment of an independent Child Poverty Commission to monitor the effectiveness of the Government's then-yet-to-be-published Child Poverty Strategy. It was renamed as the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission by the Welfare Reform Act 2012, and its name was changed to the Social Mobility Commission by chapter 7, section 6 of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. From 2012 to 2017 the Chair of the commission was Alan Milburn.

Renaming as the SMCP Commission

In April 2011, when the Government's Child Poverty Strategy was published, it announced that the Child Poverty Act would be amended so that the Child Poverty Commission would "be replaced by a new Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission". The commission's "broader scope" incorporating social mobility was described in the Strategy as "the Government's new approach", designed "to ensure that the Commission considers the issue of child poverty within the wider context of children's life chances and inter-generational poverty" and "the crucial links between child poverty, children's life chances and social mobility". The SMCP Commission's role was described as being "to monitor progress against the broad range of child poverty, life chances and social mobility indicators, towards the end goal of eradicating child poverty."

Renaming as the SMC

In July 2015 a Commons statement on the renaming of the commission as the SMC was made by Iain Duncan Smith as Work and Pensions Secretary: "Governments will no longer focus on just moving families above a poverty line. Instead, we want to focus on making a meaningful change to children’s lives by extending opportunity for all, so that both they and their children can escape from the cycle of poverty and improve their life chances."

Academic critiques of renaming

In semantic terms the 2011 name-change was criticised for putting together the terms "child poverty" and "social mobility" without addressing the potential "internal contradictions" of trying to deal with both at the same time, or specifying "the relative priority or importance of the two issues".
In a political studies paper published in the Political Quarterly in 2012, the renaming was interpreted ideologically as a covert rejection of any aspirations regarding child poverty. Noting the commission's shift from child poverty per se to "the broad range of child poverty, life chances and social mobility indicators", the paper argued that: "While continuing to pay lip service to the goal of ending child poverty, much of the government's energy has been devoted to trying to redefine the problem of poverty, moving beyond what it sees as a narrow preoccupation with relative low income." Severely criticising this scope creep as a climbdown from the principles of the Child Poverty Act, the paper argued: "In truth, neither the letter nor the spirit of the law has been fully adhered to, and only a lack of sustained public or media attention has spared the government the embarrassment of anyone noticing how far its policy and strategy falls short of its professed goals."
Apart from this push factor away from ending child poverty, it has also been theorised sociologically that the pull towards headlining social mobility in government policy during the 2010s occurred due to growing "underclass anxiety" about the political and social actions of the economically disadvantaged, especially following the 2011 England riots and latterly the vote for Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum. In this context, the SMC has been seen to be part of a trend among governmental agencies towards portraying social mobility simplistically as a set of "component pieces which can be tackled with specific ameliorant policies", and shying away from acknowledging how "the class system" creates a fundamental structure of inequality. This trend in governmental outlook has been critiqued as "the New Mobility discourse".

December 2017 – December 2018

Resignations

In December 2017 Milburn and his three fellow Commissioners resigned. Milburn's letter of resignation, dated 2 December, explained to Prime Minister Theresa May the reasons for their decision, including roles on the Commission being vacant for almost two years and his belief that the Government was "unable to devote the necessary energy and focus to the social mobility agenda". The letter was published in The Guardian.

''The Future of the Social Mobility Commission''

In March 2018 the Commons Education Committee published The Future of the Social Mobility Commission. The report recommended that the commission should be renamed as the Social Justice Commission, and that there should be a minister for social justice/social mobility. It also recommended that the commission should always have at least seven members in addition to the chair, and have an extended remit to:

publish social justice impact assessments on government policies and proposals
actively advise Ministers on how to improve social justice in England, rather than advising only at their request

Robert Halfon as the committee's Chair argued that the extended remit would give the Commission "real teeth" as "a new social justice body in the heart of Downing Street with the levers and powers to coordinate action to drive forward initiatives and implement solutions". He argued that renaming the SMC as the Social Justice Commission would "ensure not just focusing on those already on the ladder but bringing them to the ladder and making sure we are there if they fall".

Government response

In May 2018 the Government published its response, which rejected the committee's recommendations.

Recommendation	Response	Explanation
that the commission should be renamed as the Social Justice Commission.	Rejected	that the terms 'social justice' and 'social mobility' are "intrinsically linked": "Social justice is a term which has come to denote a specific focus on the most deprived in society, making sure they have the opportunities to succeed enjoyed by others and are not held back by their circumstances. Social mobility–making sure that someone's background does not determine their future chances in life–therefore must have social justice at its core".
that the commission should have an extended remit to publish social justice impact assessments on government policies and proposals, and actively advise Ministers on how to improve social justice in England, rather than advising only at their request.	Rejected	"that departments themselves are best placed to consider the impact of policy and legislative proposals on social justice, as they are the experts on their policy areas".
that there should be a minister for social justice/social mobility.	Rejected	that the responsibility was already covered by Nadhim Zahawi as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, and that Damian Hinds as Education Secretary was "absolutely committed" to social mobility, having previously chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Social Mobility.

The Government's response was criticised by Halfon: "We called for a beefed-up Commission with the resources, direction and teeth needed to tackle society's burning injustices but, in its response, the Government has sadly failed to seize this opportunity."