CIVIL SERVANTS who have the “right accent” were found to have a better chance of gaining opportunities than those from disadvantaged backgrounds, a new report has said. Published by the Social Mobility Commissions, it found that up to 71 of senior officials had privileged upbringings and quarter of them in top jobs had attended an independent school.

Further analysis of more than 300,000 civil servants revealed that just 18% of senior Civil Service came from a disadvantaged background.

The staff that were promoted were more likely to have been privileged, had the right accent or “received pronunciation.”

Followed by an emotionally detached and understated manner, and an “intellectual approach” to culture and politics.

Dr Sam Friedman, incoming professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, who conducted the report, discovered that those who get to the top “use existing networks.”

The report stated: “The right accent and a ‘studied neutrality’ seem to win through at every stage of their career. Even at the lower end of the profession, progress is thwarted for those who don’t know the rule.”

Black civil servants were also found to be routinely subject to “classed stereotypes of blackness that are both offensive and bear no resemblance to their actual lives and experiences.”

One civil servant who was interviewed for the report said: “So, my sense from quite early on was that there was a secret code as to how to get on.

“There were these folk that worked in the Treasury, had done certain things… they knew about ‘the velvet drainpipe’, as you hear it described. The way up and through. And they’d clearly done it, and they had a language to speak about it.”

The report showed significant regional division amongst staff as just 22% of London-based civil servants were found to be from a low socio-economic background, compared with 48% in the North East.

Across departments, people from working-class backgrounds made up just 12% of those working at the Treasury, in comparison to 45% at the Department for Work and Pensions.

The report added that although the Civil Service has been lauded for fair recruitment and publishing workforce data, the “socio-economic diversity has rarely been scrutinised, and not for several decades.”

The organisation was “is acutely aware that it needs to do better” and had devised an action plan moving forward.

The commission also recommended that class should be now considered a “protected characteristic.”

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.”