High inequality, low integration - two sides of the same coin?

Today sees the second report of the Social Integration Commission, which I chair. It has been published on the same day as the 2014 State of the Nation report of the Social Mobility Commission and there are important overlaps between the reports: Inequality and segregation go together and fuel each other.......

The Social Integration Commission's first report – which received extensive coverage earlier this year – revealed the degree of poor integration which persists alongside the growing diversity of the British population.  We highlighted that a lack of integration is an issue for all groups. White Britons are as likely to have unrepresentative social networks as people from other ethnic backgrounds, and Londoners’ networks are amongst the furthest away from reflecting the make-up of the communities in which they live.

We also found that one of the most significant areas of poor integration is between people from different social classes. This lack of integration has important and worrying implications for cohesion and economic inclusion.

It is poignant that the Commission's second report is published on the same day as Alan Milburn's damning assessment of the UK's faltering anti-poverty strategy. Our willingness to tolerate poverty and the diminished life chances of poorer citizens is surely not unrelated to the lack of interaction and friendship between our social elite and the disadvantaged. Indeed there is international evidence that inequality levels and mean policies towards the poor go hand in hand with levels of prejudice. The more we think of the disadvantaged as different people to ourselves the less sympathy we have for them and the less support we are liable to give to measures to tackle exclusion.

Milburn's report makes a number of powerful recommendations, but as I pointed out in my 2011 annual lecture the philosophical and political arguments for greater social justice need to be underpinned by a culture of empathy for those different to ourselves.

Today's Social Integration Commission's report provides evidence of the consequences and costs of poor integration for individuals and society. The figures we give in relation to employment, recruitment and career progression, and community health and well-being are estimates; however, using the most robust methodology available and erring on the side of caution, the evidence suggests an overall financial cost to the UK of approximately 0.5 per cent of GDP.

Equally importantly, the report contains important new research showing that people gain from better integration and that the small steps taken to help people mix lead to significant benefits in the future.

UK society is a tolerant society that has coped pretty well with some of the potential tensions of increasing diversity; despite some of headlines we have garnered this morning, it is not the Commission’s intention to spread doom and gloom or to be alarmist. I would summarise our argument as follows: tolerance is not enough, but it need not be hard to do more. Exactly what that ‘do more’ might involve will be the focus of our final report.

Our final recommendations will focus not only, or even mainly, on the role of government but on the things that other sectors, agencies, communities and individuals can do to make sure that the UK’s trajectory towards better integration more closely matches its trajectory towards greater diversity.

In all these debates we should ask what we can do ourselves. Of course, a great deal of the RSA's research and development  seeks to address aspects on social justice, but as CEO of an organisation with a funding model which relies on Fellows who can afford to make an annual donation I am acutely aware that the Society is just the kind of place to which recommendations from the Social Integration Commission’s final report will be addressed. Fortunately we have at least one bit of good practice to celebrate.

I was in Wales on Saturday for the RSA. It was positive event with a very impressive range of Fellows in attendance. Part of what made it good was the role played by two young people recruited as part of the RSA’s Centenary Young Fellows appeal. I hope we can build on the success of CYF to open up a continuous route for younger people to the Fellowship and that we can also explore how we might use other mechanisms to increase the Fellowship's diversity.

It is also vital to recognise that even if our annual donation and joining criteria are somewhat restrictive that doesn’t mean we can’t engage a more diverse group of non-Fellows as partners in our work, as many of our best regions and networks already do.