Out-Law News 2 min. read

UK public sector will recruit on 'name blind' basis by 2020, says government


The UK Civil Service and National Health Service (NHS) will recruit on a 'name blind' basis by 2020, as part of plans to improve diversity in public sector recruitment, the government has announced.

The change is one of a number of measures announced by the government following the publication of the Bridge Report, which was commissioned by the Civil Service in response to reports that only 4.4% of successful applicants to its 'Fast Stream' graduate recruitment programme are from the poorest backgrounds.

Lord Holmes of Richmond, the government's diversity adviser, urged the UK's major private sector employers to follow the government's lead.

"The Bridge Group report offers potential nuggets of gold, not just for the Civil Service but for the UK," he said.

"Social mobility should be on all of our minds if we are to be the citizens, the communities, the country we are capable of. The problem is that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. The Civil Service is not unusual in facing this but the Fast Stream offers a unique possibility to make a real impact on social mobility in the UK," he said.

The Bridge Group, which operates out of King's College London, is an independent policy association working to promote social mobility through higher education. Its report found that although the Civil Service was "actively engaged in efforts to secure socio-economic diversity" among successful Fast Stream applicants, the profile of those accepted to the programme was in fact "less diverse than the student population at the University of Oxford".

Among the reasons given by the report's authors for this discrepancy were low levels of awareness of the programme among students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and a view among many familiar with it that the programme was "both attractive and intimidating". The programme also places too much emphasis on candidates' university of study and previous grades, despite the fact that neither factor is considered as part of the selection process, according to the report.

Leading UK businesses including HSBC, Deloitte, KPMG and the BBC committed last year to name blind recruitment, referring to a process through which names are removed from recruitment applications in order to reduce potential discrimination. Speaking at last year's Conservative party conference, prime minister David Cameron cited research showing that people with names that sounded ethnically 'white' were nearly twice as likely to be called for interview as people with names associated with other ethnicities.

The government also intends to tackle inequalities in the public sector by publishing an 'inequality index' pay ratio of the salaries between its median and highest-paid employees. It also intends to create over 200,000 public sector apprenticeships by 2020, and to establish regional assessment centres in order to encourage graduate recruitment outside of London.

"I want to see a Britain where nobody is defined by the circumstances of their birth," said Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock.

"Inequality matters. Countries with higher income inequality have lower levels of social mobility. It’s harder to climb the ladder of opportunity if the rungs are further apart. We're going to put more rungs in that ladder," he said.

We are processing your request. \n Thank you for your patience. An error occurred. This could be due to inactivity on the page - please try again.