Senior-level professions ‘closed’
Limited progress is being made in prising open the professions to all, with the senior ranks of politics, medicine and the law remaining a “closed shop”, evidence from a report suggests.
Labour’s former health secretary Alan Milburn, the Government’s reviewer on social mobility, argued that too many children from average income and middle class families, let alone lower income ones, were “losing out” in the race for professional jobs.
At the top of the professional tree, he said, the “default setting” was to recruit from “far too narrow a pot”. Speaking at a Press conference in London, Mr Milburn said there was growing concern social mobility in Britain had been stagnant for too long. “At the top especially, the professions remain dominated by the social elite.”