Civil servants with ‘right accent’ get top jobs while disadvantaged left behind, report finds

Career progression is ‘thwarted for those who don’t know the rules’, Social Mobility Commission finds

A quarter of senior civil servants attended a private school (Getty Images)

Civil servants who speak with the “right accent” and come from more privileged backgrounds are more likely to be promoted than their colleagues, a report has revealed.

Research by the Social Mobility Commission found that almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of top officials came from affluent backgrounds, while a quarter in the most senior positions had attended a private school (compared to the UK average of seven per cent). Just 18 per cent of senior officials came from a disadvantaged background.

The study analysed 300,000 civil servants, finding that those with privileged upbringings tended to be promoted more often.The report’s author, Dr Sam Friedman, incoming Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, found that those who had “the right accent and a ‘studied neutrality’ seem to win through at every stage of their career”. Conducting more than 100 hour-long interviews, the study found that “progress is thwarted for those who don’t know the rules”.

Steven Cooper, interim co-chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said: “Civil servants from disadvantaged backgrounds are significantly under-represented in the organisation, and even if they do ‘get in’ they can struggle to ‘get on’.”

The Commission advised that class be added to the list of protected characteristics, which include race, gender, sexuality, disability, age and religion. It also recommended remote working of Parliament should be made permanent in order to allow MPs, ministers and Civil Service hubs to be located outside London.

Civil servants from disadvantaged backgrounds were particularly under-represented in London, with just 22 per cent coming from working class backgrounds compared with almost half (48 per cent) in north-east England.

Female and black civil servants from low socio-economic backgrounds face specific challenges, the report found: while white men in this cohort “consciously draw” on their class background, women said they conceal it as “‘bringing their whole self to work’ only leaves them vulnerable to negative judgement from colleagues”. Meanwhile, black civil servants reported “routinely battling classed stereotypes of blackness that are both offensive and bear no resemblance to their actual lives and experiences”.

Further complicating matters, about a quarter of civil servants who identified as hailing from a low socio-economic background and who were interviewed appeared to have downplayed more advantageous upbringings. The report found that this is “rooted in ‘origin stories’ where people reach back beyond their own upbringing to locate their background in extended family histories of working class struggle or upward mobility”.

The findings echo the British Social Attitudes Survey published earlier this year, which revealed that 47 per cent of Britons in middle-class professional and managerial jobs identify as working class – and about half of this cohort do so despite having parents who also worked in middle-class professions.

Dr Friedman said: “An important part of progressing through the labyrinth of the Civil Service is mastering the unwritten rules; what jobs to take, where to work, how to negotiate opportunities, and above all how to behave.

“And, strikingly, it is those from privileged backgrounds who hold the upper hand in unpicking these hidden rules.”

Civil Service social mobility champion Bernadette Kelly, who is also Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, said: “We are strongly committed to driving progress on socio-economic diversity in the Civil Service.

“No-one should be held back from achieving their full potential because they come from a less privileged background. We are already acting on many of the findings and recommendations in this report – for example, we are extending apprenticeships and moving hundreds of Senior Civil Service jobs out of London.

“I hope it will help us to focus our efforts on the actions that will have the most impact.”