The government’s announcement that the civil service Summer Internship Programme will be restricted to students from a lower socioeconomic background has been met with mixed reaction.
Here, CSW rounds up a selection of the responses to the changes to the scheme.
Unions support move but urge government to go further
The reaction from civil service unions was mostly positive but called on the the government to go further.
The FDA union said improving access to the civil service to people from working-class backgrounds is a “necessary aim for any government”, but added that more needs to be done to support job progression for people from lower-income backgrounds into senior roles.
PCS also said it supported the plan to get more working-class people working in the civil service, but warned that the government would need to end “endemic low pay” to attract the best talent.
Prospect, meanwhile, called for the measures to be implemented in “a fair and transparent manner”.
The union, which represents represents specialists in the civil service including engineers and scientists, also warned of the need to attract and develop more people with STEM and other specialist skills “and facilitate better progression and through their careers”.
Diplomats' differing views
The reactions of two diplomats, one in post and another retired, give a hint at how the decision has divided people.
Ross Allen, British ambassador to Estonia, described it as “a really positive move to bring people from a much wider range of backgrounds into the UK civil service”, writing on social media platform X.
On the other hand, former diplomat Nigel Thorpe, whose last posting was as British ambassador to Hungary from 1998 to 2003, said he was concerned about the move.
In a letter to The Times, published yesterday, he said: “After 34 years as a civil servant, working in the diplomatic service and home civil service, I was impressed by the meritocratic nature of these great public institutions, where I was satisfied that you only succeeded if you were capable.
“Perhaps my timing was good, as it was a time of great social mobility and openness in society. I did feel that there was a tendency to recruit to type, while the reputation of some departments, especially the Foreign Office, may have discouraged some from applying. But overall I felt I worked in a very meritocratic system.
“Anyway, I hope there was no discrimination either for or against background: my father left school at 14 and never attained any professional qualifications, while I attended the local grammar school and then a red-brick provincial university. I was flattered and surprised when my application to join the diplomatic service was successful. I still hope it was on the only basis that matters: merit.”
'Test and learn' it, says think tank
Meanwhile, a blog from the Institute for Government – co-authored by former civil servants Alex Thomas and Hannah Keenan, and Heloise Dunlop, who managed a digital and data transformation programme at the Department for Education as a consultant – described the move as being “worth a go”, but warned that internships and grad schemes cannot solve all workforce problems.
The authors said Labour should "test" the scheme and "learn" from the results, "in the spirit of one of the government’s favourite current phrases".
"If it works, then all to the good. If it does not, then it should be scrapped and the civil service should try something else," they added.
They also said the programme – which will take on 200 people per year – is “a drop in the ocean”, with that number representing 0.04% of the civil service, and that the government will need to do much more to improve intakes from lower-income backgrounds.
Their ideas include scrapping success profiles, which they said “are too rigidly applied, and too hard to navigate for those without privileged access to the civil service”; and introducing an expert pay review body for the whole civil service to enable pay decisions to be “grounded in the reality of the job market and cost of living”.
Badenoch: 'I'd scrap all this rubbish'
The reaction from opposition leader Kemi Badenoch was about as critical as you would expect, given Conservative ministers only reformed the scheme in 2023 to remove the diversity criteria from the programme. Until that point, the scheme had only been available to undergraduate students from ethnic-minority and lower socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as those with a disability.
Badenoch, whose roles in government included minister for women and equalities, pledged to undo the change if she became prime minister.
"Under my leadership, a Conservative government would scrap all this rubbish and hire the best people,” she said.
Conservative shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood added that the civil service deserves to have talent “chosen on ability”.
"We believe in opportunity based on what you can do, not where you come from,” he said.
"We all want to see greater opportunity for working-class young people. But this scheme sends the message that unless you fit a particular social profile, you're no longer welcome.”
The decision was also criticised by Conservative baroness Tina Stowell, a former civil servant who is now a commissioner at the Social Mobility Commission, an independent non-departmental body that advises government on improving social mobility in England.
Commenting on X, Stowell called the move “mad”. She said recruitment into the civil service “must be on merit, not any form of identity” and progress once in it should be based on the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan reports’ aim that “the able and energetic rise to the top”, while “the dull and inefficient remain at the bottom”.
“What needs to change is assumption that those who enter via ‘Fast Stream’ deserve – throughout their careers – to be ahead of their colleagues who enter via other routes and who demonstrate talent, energy and effectiveness on the job,” she added.
The move also received criticism from the Liberal Democrats.
Lib Dem MP Paul Kohler, the party’s transport shadow, called the plan “more ill-thought-out virtue signalling from Labour stooping to class war to appease the left”.
Writing on X, he also raised concern that “according to press reports, children of nurses and teachers will be excluded from civil service internships” and said he would write to McFadden “for clarification”.
The government’s measure of socioeconomic background is based on the occupation of the applicant's main household earner when they were 14 years old. The table below, from the Social Mobility Commission, shows the kinds of jobs that fit into each category.
The commission concluded in 2017 that this is the best measure for a workforce. It also recommends additional supplementary questions on the type of school attended and free school meals.
'It's good for all of us' – Social Mobility Foundation
Sarah Atkinson, chair of the Social Mobility Foundation, a charity leading campaigns and initiatives to improve social mobility in the UK,said the she is "excited" by the move “because it creates 200 opportunities for the kind of young people our charity works with, who are full of talent but don’t get the opportunity to be able to get the chance like this”.
Atkinson said it is also “really important” for the civil service to have “people from a range of backgrounds designing policy and services around transport, education, the benefits system”.
“So it’s good for young people. It’s good for all of us," she added.
She also explained why the occupation measure is preferred in an interview with Channel 4 News this week.
“If what you’re trying to do is make sure that you’re looking at people who have come from a low income, whose parents perhaps haven’t had graduate education and access to networks, then yes, parental occupation is a really good, clear, easy to collect, and widely collected measure, " she said.
“And we know that it tracks against people’s outcomes. If your parents did a manual job, the chances of you getting into a professional job like the civil service is much, much lower, five to six times lower than if your parents did a professional job.”
Asked why people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are not naturally getting proportionate access to the civil service, Atkinson said: “We know that one in four senior civil servants has been to a private school. So we know that networks, we know that knowledge, access to opportunities through people that you know, through confidence, these sorts of things make a massive difference. It’s not about lack of talent, it’s about lack of opportunity.”
Atkinson also agreed with civil service unions that more needs to be done to make the senior civil service more representative of people from lower-income backgrounds.
“Fewer than 20% of senior civil servants come from working class backgrounds. And that’s a figure that hasn’t really changed since the 1960s,” she said.
“So… this scheme is a great start. There’s an awful lot more that needs to happen in the civil service and in every part of the economy to make sure that talent can really progress.”