‘My healthy slice of luck’

Now, no longer involved in frontline politics, Milburn runs his own consultancy business, advises a number of large companies and works – unpaid – to increase the life chances of people born without a silver spoon in their mouth.

When he accepted the role of “social mobility tsar” from the Conservative- Liberal Democrat Coalition in August 2010 he was criticised by former colleagues, John Prescott and Andy Burnham, but defended by South Tyneside MP David Miliband, who argued that Milburn was simply serving the country.

Since taking up the role – which Alan insists is independent of the Government – he has made a number of recommendations to improve social mobility in schools, universities, internship practices and professional recruitment.

Recently, he was chosen to chair a new Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission which will hold the Government to account over social mobility.

In Alan’s view the biggest single factor in reducing social mobility has been the development of a knowledge- based economy which places a high premium on skills.

“Those without skills face low pay, endemic insecurity and little hope of social advance.”

Alan says the big hope for the future is is that the next decade will see many more professional jobs, possibly two million, being created.

“If we can open up the professions, make high quality education available to all and make access to university fairer then we can reap a similar dividend. It’s a big if.....”

A few weeks ago he recommended that universities should make lower grade offers to pupils from poorer backgrounds, and fund promising youngsters to stay on into the sixth form in school.

“I don’t get paid for doing this because I believe in it,” Alan says. “I fundamentally think I got lucky in my life and if you are in public life you want for others what you have had for yourself,” he says.

“The most depressing thing that I find is that when I go to talk to groups of young people and I look at their potential and how bright they are, and then I see the track that they are on, you can see this future of blighted potential rather than fulfilled potential.

That is not right and we should do something about it.”

So how does he explain his own success in life?

“I never had a plan. Although people often assume that you have, it is completely untrue,” says Alan, now 54.

Born in January 1958, Alan spent the first eight years of his life in a rented house in Tow Law, County Durham, before his mother – a “ very aspirational” single parent who worked for the NHS – moved to a council house on the Deerness estate.

“I came from a strong family and I was part of a very strong community in Tow Law,” he recalls.

ALAN attended the local junior school, where he remembers two “very inspirational”

teachers, a Miss Mackintyre and a Mr Dent.

“Good teachers are often the make or break thing,” says Alan.

At 11, his mother got a job in Newcastle and the family moved to live in a flat in the tough inner-city area of Benwell. “It was a bit of culture shock,” he remembers.

Alan admits he didn’t do very well at John Marley School, scraping just five O level passes.

“It was a tough school and the expectation of what happened to kids there was lower. I can remember being taken on careers trips to the Northern Rock Building Society and what we called The Ministry at Longbenton.

ROOM AT THE TOP: Alan Milburn with Sir John Hall in 2004, with Tony Blair in 1994 and with his wife, Ruth, and son, Joe, in 1992

I can remember seeing the rows of desks and thinking this is not for me.”

“A slice of luck came along when I was 16, my mum got married and we moved to Stokesley, in leafy North Yorkshire. “I got into the sixth form at Stokesley Comprehensive School.

It offered very high quality teaching and it made a profound difference to me.”

Within a few years, instead of being on a course to leave school at 16, he was starting a degree course at Lancaster University.

After completing his degree, Alan started a PhD at Newcastle University, but never completed it because he got “embroiled” in politics.

Initially working in a radical bookshop in Newcastle, known as Days of Hope, Alan quickly moved into mainstream politics, joining the Labour Party in 1983 and becoming regional president of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union.

“I was very involved in the trade union campaign to try to save Sunderland shipyard,” he recalls.

He says he had “no Parliamentary ambitions” at that time ,but in 1992 he was chosen as Labour candidate for Darlington, a critical ‘swing’ seat which he won just as Neil Kinnock lost to John Major nationally.

He says Kinnock’s defeat allowed him to “learn the ropes” in Parliament and prepared him for Tony Blair’s period in office.

Appointed as Health Secretary in October 1999, he oversaw a massive injection of funds into the NHS – including a huge improvement in waiting times for heart surgery,.

“I hope the Health Service was better when I left than when I first got the job,” says Alan, who resigned as Health Secretary to spend more time with his family back in the North- East, finally giving up his parliamentary seat in 2010.

By chairing the new social mobility commission, Alan hopes that he was increase life chances for ordinary people born without advantages. But he admits he was probably “born at the right time.”

He explains: “When I was growing up social mobility was in full swing and anything seemed possible. There was an economic and social revolution happening and more working class kids had the opportunity to move into a white-collar professional job, rather than being in an annual job. I got lucky.”