For a parable of our time, look no further than James Caan, the Coalition Government's new "Social Mobility Tsar".

The Pakistan-born entrepreneur's own rags to riches story certainly qualifies the Dragon's Den panellist to speak about his latest role, fronting the Government's "Opening Doors" campaign. As Deputy PM Nick Clegg explained yesterday: "This is about giving young people who don't have the contacts, don't have the support, opportunity to find places where they can work, where they can live out their dreams, where doors can be opened for them." So far, so good.

The fact that the DPM himself got a handsome leg-up from his daddy, in the form of an internship at a Finnish bank, slightly took the gloss off this pious aspiration. Yesterday's launch was further compromised by the revelation that Mr Caan has employed his own daughter Hanah since shortly after she graduated from the LSE in 2009 and his other daughter works for a company he has invested in.

This hardly squares with his insistence in an interview on Monday that parents shouldn't give children a helping hand in the workplace but let them "stand on their own two feet". Mr Caan's response, which was to insist that Hanah was properly qualified and underwent a "rigorous recruitment process", entirely misses the point. So does the statement from an exasperated Government spokesman that the campaign is "not about what parents do but about what businesses do."

Businesses are run by people who are also parents. If they choose to employ their own offspring or those of their friends, those posts are not available to kids from Easterhouse trying to survive on Jobseeker's Allowance. Did the other applicants for Hanah's job get a fair hearing do you think?

The "milk rounds", where major employers toured universities, seeking out the best students, have largely gone, along with white-collar jobs. Meanwhile, in the scramble for a diminishing number of internships and graduate-level entry jobs, old boys' networks reassert themselves, so that class trumps both race and gender and there is less social mobility than in the 1950s. A YouGov poll found youngsters from the most privileged groups are six times more likely to obtain employment in their chosen sphere compared with those from poorer backgrounds.

Unpaid or minimally- paid internships, especially those in London, effectively exclude all but the offspring of those prepared to subsidise their rent and travel costs. The problem with banning unpaid internships is that many companies would simply abandon them altogether. This is a no win situation for students from deprived backgrounds.

This campaign is about trying to nudge human behaviour in the right direction. It is also about a hapless government with a failed economic policy being seen to do something about young people's unemployment. Austerity economics, a housing crisis (producing spiralling rents), underemployment (which leaves plenty of spare capacity in the labour market) and the abolition of the default retirement age are contributing to a perfect storm for the young.

As it happens, our family is facing this dilemma. Our son has applied for a marketing internship with a well-known business. Hubby and I both know the chief executive. Should we phone him? We decided against it on the basis that we want our son to get the job on his own merits and not get it if another candidate is better suited to the work. String-pulling is cheating someone else out of an opportunity.

Some 150 companies have signed up to Opening Doors, with its promise of a transparent selection process and access for young people regardless of background. But the bulk of UK companies are small enterprises where networking remains paramount.

And don't look for social mobility from a Cabinet stuffed with millionaire public schoolboys. Can opposition parties come up with a better sort of capitalism, based on a shared vision and articulate how it can be achieved?