Editorial: Government falters on fairness test

Frank Field is the man charged with leading a review on child poverty; Graham Allen is looking at early intervention for children from disadvantaged backgrounds; and last week Alan Milburn was unveiled as the government's "social mobility tsar". He will report to parliament annually on his work.

Milburn authored the Unleashing Aspirations report on fair access to the professions for the Labour government a year ago, in which he called for responsibility for careers advice to be removed from Connexions. In a speech on social mobility last week, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "Fairness demands that what counts is not the school you went to or the jobs your parents did but your ability and ambition." A glance at the background of the current Cabinet, however, gives the most damning indictment on social mobility in this country today. More than half of the Cabinet were privately educated compared with seven per cent of the general population.