Social mobility tsar warns aspiration gap between UK's rich and poor 'will take 80 years to close'

It will take 80 years to close the aspiration gap between rich and poor at the current rate of progress, the Government’s social mobility tsar has warned amid fears UK society is becoming increasingly defined as “us-and-them”.

Alan Milburn, chairman of the influential Social Mobility Commission, said “whole tracts of Britain feel left behind” and that divisions will “widen, not narrow” unless ministers change tack and set long term targets for tackling inequality.

A damning new report from the Commission analysing government efforts to bridge the gap between rich and poor under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May, found failings at every stage of a person's life.

Mrs May pledged when she became Prime Minister in 2016 to help everybody “go as far as your talents will take you” but the report shows the scale of the challenge she faces.

It comes as new statistics reveal that almost one in three Britons have spent time in poverty in recent years.

The Commission has highlighted particular failings in the education system and estimated that at the current rate of progress it would take 80 years before the participation gap between university students from rich and poor areas closes.

Meanwhile, it estimated it will take 15 years before all children are school ready by the age of five and 40 years before the attainment gap between rich and poor at that age is closed.

Mr Milburn, a former Labour health secretary, said the “public mood is sour, sometimes angry" because many people feel as if they cannot get on and improve their lives.

He said: "Whole tracts of Britain feel left behind. Whole communities feel the benefits of globalisation have passed them by. Whole sections of society feel they are not getting a fair chance to succeed.

"The growing sense that we have become an us-and-them society is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a nation."

The Commission has urged Mrs May to introduce a single cross-government plan to boost social mobility with 10-year progress targets to stop short-term interventions.

It also called for a social mobility test to be applied to all new Government policy.

The Commission used a traffic light system to assess progress on improving social mobility at key stages in people's lives like school, training and higher education.

But no stage was given a green light, with early years and schools given an amber rating while the later "young people" and "working lives" stages received a red warning rating.

The report also warned that the income and wealth divide has become “more acute” and between 1997 and 2017 the bottom fifth of households saw incomes increase by just over £10 a week compared with £300 for the top fifth.

It also highlighted the emergence of growing inequality between young and old with the former increasingly reliant on help from their parents to buy a home.

Mr Milburn said the report showed the UK had reached a turning point.

"If we go on as we have been, the divisions that have opened up in British society are likely to widen, not narrow,” he said.

"There is a growing sense in the nation that these divisions are not sustainable, socially, economically or politically. There is a hunger for change.”

New data released by the Office for National Statistics showed that between 2012 and 2015 some 14.6 per cent of people in the UK experienced one year of poverty, 7.1 per cent two years, 4.1 per cent three years and 4.4 per cent four years.

That means a total of 30.2 per cent of people fell into poverty at some point over the four-year period.

Almost five million people were recorded as being in persistent poverty with incomes remaining below 60 per cent of the national median average in three out of the four years studied.

A Department for Education spokesman acknowledged that "more must be done" but said: "Tackling social mobility is at the heart of the government's ambition to make Britain a country that works for everyone.

"There are 1.8 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools than in 2010, and we are delivering three million apprenticeship places, opening up access to our higher education system and investing £500 million a year into technical education."