Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department has taken to improve social mobility in each of the last seven years.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for creating an exceptional Civil Service, improving its capability and effectiveness. A diverse and inclusive workforce, which is representative of the communities we serve, is critical to achieving this aim.

Our flagship Fast Stream graduate scheme, managed by the Cabinet Office has increased diversity of its graduate recruits over recent years and this year’s cadre is more diverse than ever. The Cabinet Office also manages the Fast Track apprenticeship Programme, offering over 700 high quality and varied apprenticeships a year to individuals from a diverse range of background and experiences. In 2010 we established the multi-award winning Summer Diversity Internship programme (SDIP), which amalgamated smaller separate internship schemes for students with a disability or from BAME communities. The programme has grown and now also offers internships to people from lower socio-economic background – these internships are an important channel for showcasing work in the Civil Service to talented people from underrepresented groups.

Furthermore, we have implemented in full the recommendations of independent research carried out by The Bridge Group, to increase social mobility in the Fast Stream.

In 2015 we streamlined and shortened the Fast Stream assessment process, opened an assessment centre in Newcastle and since then we have grown our approach to promoting a career in the Civil Service through outreach activities at universities with high concentration of students from disadvantaged background.

In March 2016 through a refresh of the Civil Service Talent Action Plan, our plan towards being the UK’s most inclusive employer, we set out an ambitious range of actions to increase social mobility in the Civil Service and beyond.

In October 2017 we published our Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, which builds on the significant advances we have made already and sets out a plan of action across the twin priorities of greater representation from people from all backgrounds and inclusion in the Civil Service workforce. The Strategy commits to establishing a baseline of SEB data for the Civil Service by 2020.