Read: Senior civil servants as privileged as they were 50 years ago

Senior civil servants are as privileged today as 50 years ago, with fewer than one in five coming from a working-class background, a report backed by the government has concluded.

The Social Mobility Commission, which advises ministers on how to make Britain fairer, identified a series of barriers that prevented staff from progressing up the ranks in Whitehall, including officials who insist on using Latin in meetings.

One senior official from an affluent background said that ministers were more comfortable receiving advice from someone like them than “a younger, Muslim, working-class woman”.

Another official compared trying to rise up the civil service to climbing a “velvet drainpipe” with a “secret code as to how to get on”.

The report used civil service workforce data and more than 100 interviews with officials to examine how representative the government was of wider society. It found that 18 per cent of senior civil servants were from working-class or low socio-economic backgrounds, compared with 19 per cent in 1967. The proportion from privileged backgrounds was even higher than it was 50 years ago, although the report said that direct comparisons were hard to draw because of shifting demographics and the shrinking working class.

Read the full story in The Times.

Fair career progression is one of 14 Levelling Up Goals launched earlier this year to set out clear objectives for the UK's Levelling Up challenge in the wake of Covid-19.