RESEARCH to be published tomorrow by Downing Street will claim that one of the most enduring and damaging criticisms of the government - that it has presided over a decline in social mobility - is no longer true.

The claim that the class system is becoming more entrenched while income inequality widens has dogged the government for years.

The new report will show that, at worst, mobility was flat from 1970 to 2000, rather than declining.

Since about 2000, it will say, people’s chances of moving up the social scale have started to improve, albeit slowly.

This reflects rising incomes for low earners and the fact that a larger number of pupils from poor households have obtained good exam results.

“Things may be starting to move in the right direction,” said a Downing Street aide. “Parental income is less important as a determinant of how young people do than it was.”

Social mobility measures whether, compared with their parents, people move between classes, occupations and income groups.

Despite the low mobility of recent years, disclosed in a report by the London School of Economics that compared children born in the 1950s and 1970s, some have managed to move up the income scale.

They include Michael Cubbin, 23, a City headhunter, who grew up in Birkenhead, Merseyside, with five brothers and sisters, the son of a university technician.

“There wasn’t much money kicking around, but education was very important to my parents,” he said.

Applying to Oxford did not cross Cubbin’s mind until he got his AS-level results: “I thought, maybe I’ve got a chance here. Oxford is geared up for private school students. There’s massive barriers to getting in for people like me. I did it, but I’m an exception. It’s because I had great parents and particularly good teachers.”

Michelle Mone, 36, grew up in the east end of Glasgow and left school at 15. Twelve years ago she set up MJM International, which produces the Ultimo range of lingerie.

James Duffy, 26, a barrister, grew up on a council estate in Epsom, Surrey. His mother was a receptionist in a hospital and his father’s jobs included working in a pub and as a security guard for racecourses.

Although nobody in his family had been to university Duffy decided while he was doing GCSEs that he wanted to go to Oxford. “I’ve always been fairly confident that I was quite bright, so I thought, why not? It didn’t seem to occur to me that I couldn’t,” he said.

After a glittering academic career he is now a successful commercial law barrister at Fountain Court chambers in central London.

“My mum still lives on a council estate, I grew up on a council estate and I knew I wanted to end up being better off than that,” he said. “I feel very privileged but I do think it’s possible for anyone.”

Duffy was helped by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity that has sponsored previous research suggesting Britain has low social mobility compared with other countries and that it has been falling behind.

The trust has used this research to argue that Britain’s education system, far from providing a ladder of opportunity, leaves young people stuck in the class in which they were born. Opposition politicians have said the decline in mobility reflects wider policy failures by Labour, including shortcomings in its welfare-to-work policies.

Liam Byrne, the cabinet office minister who will launch tomorrow’s report from the prime minister’s strategy unit, will emphasise that despite the evidence of a modest improvement in social mobility since 2000, there is much more to do.

The research paper, Getting On, Getting Ahead: A Discussion Paper Analysing the Trends and Drivers of Social Mobility, brings together the latest academic research. It will provide the backdrop for a white paper on social mobility, promised by Gordon Brown in the summer and likely to be published next month.

Ministers will use the research and white paper to argue that the short-term challenge is to protect people from the effects of recession but in the longer term social mobility needs to be raised.

Downing Street insiders say this will be achieved through further improvements in “early years” preschool education, improving school standards, post16 vocational education and equipping the workforce by raising their skills.

“What we will see is that there are no straightforward answers,” said Jo Blanden, an economist and expert on social mobility at Surrey University who contributed to the Sutton Trust research and whose work will be included in the new report. “Sometimes ministers talk about absolute mobility - whether you do a better job than your parents - but the important thing is relative mobility, whether you do better or worse than other people [of the same generation].”

Additional reporting: Georgia Warren

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