When Alan Milburn MP reported three years ago on social mobility*, he found that for all the efforts being made by the professions, they had actually become more — not less — socially exclusive over time.
Three years on, the former Labour health secretary — who was commissioned by the coaliltion — asks what progress has been made and the latest report* makes depressing reading. Some strides have been made but across the professions as a whole, he says, “the glass ceiling has been scratched but not broken” and the professions still lag way behind the social curve. None, he said, had “cracked the fair access problem”.
There have been minor changes but at the top, especially, the professions “remain dominated by a social elite”.
Taking the law, he acknowledged the efforts being made to address diversity. But worryingly, entry remains “still too socially exclusive”, he finds. His conclusion? “Overall, law is on the right track. But its progress is too slow. It needs significantly to accelerate.”
The statistics are familiar but worth repeating. The judiciary “remains solidy socially elitist, with 15 of the 17 Supreme Court judges and heads of division all educated at private schools before going on to study at Oxford or Cambridge”.
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* of 38 appeal court judges, 26 attended private schools, eight grammar schools, two state comprehensives and two were schooled overseas
* of 114 High Court judges, 83 attended independent schools; 82 then went to Oxbridge, 22 to other Russell Group universities and just three to other universities
* of all the 169 senior judges, 33 went to the 11 major public schools The report also notes:
* 43 per cent of barristers went to a fee-paying secondary school with almost one third going on to study at Oxbridge
* 41 per cent of law undergraduates were from the three highest socio-economic groups and only 21 per cent from the five lowest groups The data, when compared with ten years ago, finds little change. The group has become “only marginally more diverse in terms of school background” and “the private school dominance of the judiciary remains intact,” it says. Furthermore, the proportion of senior judges who went to Oxbridge is actually increasing
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The diversity statistics paint a similar picture. In 2011, ten out of 11 Supreme Court justices were white and male. Among High Court judges, fewer than one in six (17 out of 91) are women and fewer than five per cent from black or minority ethnic backgrounds — four in total.
Overall, of all judicial posts, 22.3 per cent are held by women and 5.1 per cent by people from black minority ethnic backgrounds.
* only 25.4 per cent of partners in law firms are women and 7.1 per cent from ethnic minorities Meanwhile at the Bar, women represent an increasing number of practising barristers but there has been only a slow increase, the report says, in the numbers from black minority ethnic backgrounds
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The picture is much better among the 150,000 registered solicitors (117,000 practising), where women account for 45.8 per cent. Since 2000, the total number of solicitors holding practising certificates has grown by 42.4 per cent while the number of women among them has grown almost twice as fast, having increased by 79.7 per cent.
But the Legal Services Board pointed out that only 25.4 per cent of partners in law firms are women and 7.1 per cent from ethnic minorities. “The anticipated ‘trickle up’ effect from seeing more women and minority ethnic lawyers entering the profession does not seem to have materialised.” The same applies at the Bar.
The report praises some measures — such as initiatives stemming from Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury’s working party that reported on access to the Bar — and accepts that it may take years to see the benefits, as that is the slow timescale to reach the top of the profession. His report had at least “galvanised the legal sector to show far greater determination to take the fair access agenda seriously”.
Those measures include work by the Inns of Court to challenge young people’s stereotypes about what it is like to work at the Bar; work experience programmes and mentoring law students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The Inner Temple drew particular praise for its schools project and the law practice, Addleshaw Goddard LLP, for its legal access scheme, aiming to identify law students from less privileged backgrounds. Since 2007, 13 participants have gone on to secure training contracts with the firm.
What, though, is worrying is that the changes among those applying to study law are only modest, the Milburn report says. Access remains competitive and highly competitive although the figures show progress, albeit slow, in the right direction.
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Much more needs to be done. He commends outreach programmes but insists that these must be evaluated to have real impact; and initiatives need to be more focused. Social mobility also needs to be put at the heart of organisations and embedded: too often, he says, it is driven by a few committed individuals.
“To have permanency, it cannot just be a senior partner leading the charge.” Human resources and recruitment teams all have a part to play.
And selection must be from the widest possible pool, not just a handful of universities.
The senior ranks of all the professions, Milburn concludes, are a closed shop. “If social mobility is to become anything other than a pipedream, they will have to open up.”
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* Unleashing Aspiration 2009
* Fair Access to Professional Careers 2012