Shadow Cabinet Office minister says policy will bust open Whitehall
The Labour party has pledged to fast track black and ‘working-class’ applicants into senior Civil Service roles if it wins the next general election in 2015.
Under its proposals, the party will aim to recruit 18 per cent black and ethnic minority and 24 per cent "working-class" candidates into Whitehall’s Fast Stream graduate training programme.
Applicants will qualify as “working-class” if their parents hold jobs that are classified as unskilled or semi-skilled, for example factory work, by the Office for National Statistics.
Currently, the Fast Track scheme selects more than 300 graduates each year as potential leaders of the future. However, the plans to boost diversity in the selection process are a response to criticism that the Civil Service workforce is a “closed shop” and staffed in the majority by white people from upper- and middle-class backgrounds, who were privately educated and/or attended Oxbridge. Details of the proposals have not yet been discussed with leaders of the Civil Service but the plans are expected to be in the party’s election manifesto.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher said: "Labour would make sure kids from working-class backgrounds can help run the country by busting open Whitehall. We want ordinary kids to have the chance to go to frontline government; from the classroom to the corridors of power.
"The civil service is like a closed shop, with fewer women, fewer ethnic minorities and fewer kids with working-class parents. Politics can often feel distant and remote from working people - Labour's answer is to put them at the heart of our system.
"We want a one nation civil service which looks more like those it is intended to serve."
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “To win the global race we need the best civil servants regardless of their background.” The spokesperson also said that since 1999, the percentage of minority ethnic civil servants had risen from 5.6 per cent to 9.6 per cent.
Dugher will discuss the plans at an event organised by the IPPR think tank today.