Labour’s ‘blunt’ drive to treat social class discrimination like racism and sexism is a ‘mistake’ says head of scrapped social mobility body
The chairman of the Social Mobility Commission, Alun Francis, has criticised Labour's plan to treat class discrimination on a par with racism and sexism, calling the approach a "mistake" as the body he leads is scrapped. Equalities minister Bridget Phillipson last week announced a new dedicated unit to tackle class inequality, to sit within the Office for Equality and Opportunity alongside existing units on race, gender, LGBT and disability rights, with the Social Mobility Commission being closed as a result. Francis's intervention matters because it comes from the head of the very body being wound up, raising questions about the design and oversight of its replacement.
Francis told BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour that class was too poorly defined and too "blunt" a concept to underpin targeted policy interventions, questioning whether occupation, income or culture should be used to measure it, and also flagged a lack of independent scrutiny of the new unit. The Government's plans include imposing a legally binding "socio-economic duty" on public bodies, requiring them to consider the impact of decisions on transport, services and budgets for lower-income families, a measure long sought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a Labour manifesto pledge. The new unit is expected to focus particularly on outcomes for white working-class people, while the Social Mobility Commission, established in 2010, is being closed after ministers said it had produced no policy-changing work in a decade; the Conservatives' Joy Morrissey has separately criticised the plan as adding "more bureaucracy".
In short
- SMC chairman calls Labour's class-discrimination plan a "mistake"
- New Whitehall unit to replace scrapped Social Mobility Commission
- Plan includes legal duty on public bodies over class inequality
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Treating class disadvantage alongside other forms of discrimination could make public bodies account for how decisions on services, transport and budgets affect people from lower-income backgrounds. A dedicated unit and a binding socio-economic duty may give longstanding concerns about unequal opportunity greater visibility and prompt practical action, including for white working-class communities.
The case against
Class is harder to define consistently than categories such as race or sex: income, occupation and culture can each identify different groups, making targeted policies difficult to design and assess. Replacing an independent commission with a unit inside government may also weaken scrutiny and risk focusing on a broad label rather than the specific barriers people face.
Explained simply
The Social Mobility Commission is a public body set up in 2010 to advise the government on widening opportunity for people from poorer backgrounds. It has faced criticism in the past for having limited practical impact, and ministers have now decided to close it down as part of a wider reorganisation of how the government handles equality issues.
In its place, the government is creating an Office for Equality and Opportunity, which already houses separate units dealing with race, gender, LGBT and disability rights. A new unit within this office will focus specifically on class and socio-economic disadvantage, including proposals for a legally binding duty requiring public bodies to consider how their decisions affect people on lower incomes, such as in transport and public services.
This matters because it marks a shift in how the government defines and tackles inequality, potentially placing social class alongside characteristics like race and sex as a category meriting formal protection and dedicated policy attention. Class is a broader and less precisely defined concept than these other categories, since it can be measured by income, occupation or culture, which is why the change has prompted debate among those who work on social mobility and equality policy.
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