FORMER Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn has called on the next Government to end low pay as part of a package of policies to combat poverty and improve social mobility.

The former Darlington MP, who was a senior member of Tony Blair’s cabinet in the last Labour Government, made his plea at a conference organised by the Darlington Partnership and hosted by Darlington Borough Council.

The ‘Prosperity for All’ conference aimed to identify what action could be taken to improve the financial well-being and life chances of those living in poverty and halt the increase in poverty.

Mr Milburn, who has chaired the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission for more than two years, said low pay and the lack of social mobility meant that Britain “is on the brink of becoming a permanently divided society”.

Contrasting his own good fortune to be born at a time of increased social mobility - rising from a council estate in County Durham to Cabinet Minister - he said social mobility was now “flatlining”.

He said the chances of someone from a poor background in the North-East to make the same progress today was “an unlikely prospect”.

But the former Health Secretary said he did not accept that it was impossible to break “the transmission of disadvantage from one generation to the next”.

Mr Milburn said one of the key changes that needed to be made was to end low pay.

He said: “Today, the UK has one of the highest rates of low pay. Five million are on less than a living wage. Frankly, they are the forgotten people of this country. They are not earning enough to escape poverty.”

The former MP said that child poverty used to be concentrated in workless households but now two out of three poor children are in a family where at least one parent is in work.

“We believe the next Government should aim to make us a living wage country by 2020. By then no worker should earn less than the living wage,” he added.

Mr Milburn said it was wrong to ask taxpayers to subsidise employers to pay staff low wages.

He called on the next Government to set targets to narrow the attainment gap and abolish illiteracy and innumeracy by 2020.

“The quality of teachers is the key factor. The best teachers should have higher pay to teach in the most challenging schools,” he added.

The Bishop of Durham, The Right Revd Paul Butler, told the meeting it was a “scandal” that food banks were needed.

But he argued that society should tackle what he described as the “poverty of relationships” as well as economic poverty.

He said a living wage “would help parents have more time with their children rather than having to take on second jobs".