Queens Speech 2016 Chances and Choices

This year’s Queen’s Speech might have been delivered with the usual tradition and grandeur, but is about the opposite – smashing inherited chances and giving choices to the poorest.

 

It puts life chances at front and centre of the Government’s priorities for the year ahead.

 

I welcome this commitment, having recently launched a major campaign to boost social mobility in Norwich, following a report by the Social Mobility Commission indicating that a child growing up poor in Norwich has lower life chances than almost anywhere else in England.

 

In Parliament I have met with key experts in the field of social mobility, including a recent high level meeting at Downing Street. I’ll also be meeting regularly with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from next week to discuss how the life chances strategy will work in practice. Opportunity and aspiration are among the most important pillars of a strong society, so it is right that the issue receives such prominence.

 

Locally, I’m bringing together school leaders, local politicians and business leaders, to develop a strategy for closing the gap. There are a number of measures in the Queen’s Speech this week which I believe are key to achieving this objective.

 

You can read my speech in Parliament HERE, covering higher education, schools, children in care, volunteering and more.

 

Education is central.  I want every Norwich North school to be good or outstanding by 2020. Progress is being made but schools in Norfolk still need to improve. Our children only get one chance at education, and if they are failed, they carry it with them throughout their entire lives. I support the recent education reforms announced because I think they will give Norwich children that chance to do better.  We can't stay as we are, because that's not been good enough for children in Norwich, so I’m prepared to speak up for reforms that can work.

 

It’s not just schools.  We all need to work together across all parts of education, business, councils and the community.

 

I also back the Government’s continued emphasis on building a strong economy, with higher wages and lower welfare, which rewards work, enables saving, and creates opportunities for people to get on and succeed. As part of this, the Government will be introducing legislation to ensure Britain has the infrastructure our businesses need to thrive and create jobs.

 

Leading the rail campaign for our area, I’ve succeeded in getting improvements to our rail infrastructure, which increase our connections and bring up to 8,000 jobs to Norwich.  This is not just big talk – when we look at people’s chances and choices, we know that you can do better when you have better transport connections.  That’s actually what got me into politics in the first place – sheer frustration at growing up in rural Norfolk with few opportunities that I could get to.  We all need to get to know people and places to be able to make use of our learning and make our way in life.  Perhaps it’s not surprising that areas like Norfolk and Somerset, more remote, are such social mobility coldspots. So if we are to boost life chances in Norwich, then better infrastructure and the jobs that go with it are an absolute must.