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Social Mobility and the Professions

The hon. Gentleman is on to a very important point. One thing that I am absolutely convinced about, not just from anecdotal evidence but from academic evidence, is that the problem is not that young people do not have aspirations, it is that they are blocked in fulfilling them. It is not that the country does not have talent—to coin a phrase, Britain's got talent. It's got lots of talent. The issue is how we can unleash it. Not everybody will aspire to be, or have the aptitude to be, a doctor or a lawyer—of course not. Not everybody will want to come into this place. However, for those who do, surely our objective as a society must be to ensure an equal opportunity, in the best sense of the phrase, for them to achieve that. I fear that that does not exist today.