Whitehall will not be improved by recruiting based on social class
TAYFUN SALCI/ALAMY
G eorge Orwell declared eight decades ago that 'England is the most class-ridden country under the sun'. It is a reputation that the nation has tried, with some success, to shed — especially when it comes to its institutions. In modern times the civil service has been seen as the embodiment of British fairness: an institution to which one is admitted, and rises up through, on merit. It may be biased towards the well-educated, but fairness has long been at the core of its recruitment model.
Yet the Starmer government has proposed to do away with that classless model. Pat McFadden, the usually wise-headed Cabinet Office minister, hopes to diversify the social makeup of the civil service by restricting internships to those from working-class backgrounds. Under his proposals, a form of elitism in reverse, Whitehall's main internship scheme will be open only to those from 'lower socio-economic backgrounds', defined by what the applicant's parents' jobs were when he or she was aged 14. These internships are important as the gateway to coveted places on the civil service 'fast stream' graduate programme. In this day and age, parental occupation is a bizarre criterion. Having tied itself in knots over its definition of 'working people' Labour is now threatening to do the same with 'working class'.
• Civil service internships will be only for working class
Mr McFadden's proposals are a disheartening departure from the guiding principle of the Northcote–Trevelyan reforms of 1854, which created the modern Whitehall. The aim was simple: to ensure that 'the best and energetic rise to the top' while 'the dull and inefficient remain at the bottom'. In place of the old boy network came exams, training and transparent selection.
Mr McFadden's regressive proposal is unlikely to succeed. It is based on the assumption that working-class candidates will fail unless the system is rigged in their favour. The fact that some 56 per cent of Britons self-define as 'working class' points to the emptiness of the exercise. At what point does someone stop being working class? Is it, say, when a postman becomes a manager? Would a child of a teacher, a respected but hardly elite profession, be excluded? The scheme also assumes that class is a permanent condition, and family background a fixed identity. Countless youngsters who do not neatly qualify as either 'privileged' or 'deprived' will be written off. Mr McFadden's wizard wheeze risks interviews for internships becoming re-enactments of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch, a race to the social bottom in which candidates will seek to outdo each other with tales of hardship. Just as Sir Keir Starmer is at pains to remind us he is the son of a toolmaker, so too will interns be at pains to burnish their proletarian credentials. Hailing from the proverbial cardboard box or septic tank offers little indication of administrative ability.
The real problem is that talent is spread equally but opportunity is not. For many bright young people, housing and childcare are unaffordable, limiting their horizons. Mr McFadden would do better to tackle these structural issues. It should be perfectly possible to create a recruitment system that is rigorous yet fair. In law and finance firms have experimented successfully with name-blind or school-blind recruitment. These systems test the individual, not the bloodline. Once class is established as a selection criterion and merit becomes secondary, trust in public institutions will inevitably erode.
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