Trevor Phillips has described Whitehall's performance on appointing members of ethnic minorities to senior posts as a "disgrace".

The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality told this week's Whitehall and Westminster World newspaper that the current situation is not acceptable.

"The civil service often says, behind its hand, that they are the ones who really run the country - it's not the politicians at all," he said.

"Well, I'll take them at their word. I want to see the civil service start looking like the country it runs.

"Of course we've got lots of ethnic minority civil servants, but virtually all of them are in the lower grades.

"We coined the phrase 'snowy peaks' for the civil service, because when you get above grade five they’re virtually all white.

"This is a disgrace. It's not modern - the civil service isn't keeping pace with the country it reckons it runs."

Phillips, who applauded the decision to appoint Ministry of Defence permanent secretary Bill Jeffrey as Whitehall's 'diversity champion', also hit out at what he says is the failure of government departments to assess new policies and legislation for their impact on race equality - something they should be doing in order to comply with the Race Relations Amendment Act.

"The race equality impact assessment is there to make sure that policies are better," Phillips said.

"They aren't doing the assessments and this is wrong.

"I know why they're not doing them - they think the assessments are a way of stopping carrying out the best policies."

Phillips, however, stressed that the CRE is not focusing on Whitehall for the sake of it.

"I desperately want the civil service to  understand that when we go after them it's not because we fancy it or we feel it is time to spank a civil servant," he told the newspaper.

"It's because we want them to do their jobs better and more successfully."

Asked if there is either a lack of will or understanding on the part of the civil service, Phillips identified another factor. "I think they're afraid," he said.

"I think there is a sense in government that race just means trouble - every time you talk about it, someone somewhere is going to come unstuck, so the best thing to do is pretend it doesn't exist, lock it in a box and forget about it.

"The problem is that in the real world you can’t forget it."

In response a spokesman for the Cabinet Office told Whitehall and Westminster World that it welcomed the CRE's contribution.

"The civil service fully accepts there is some way to go here," he said.

"That is what we have the 10-point diversity plan for, and the 2008 target for four per cent of the senior civil service to be from a black and minority ethnic (BME) background, which we are on track to meet.

"But we do not accept that the situation is a disgrace or that we are afraid of the challenge."

The Cabinet Office also stressed that the civil service overall is more than representative of the population in terms of ethnicity.

"Some 8.2 per cent of its workforce is from a BME background, compared to 7.3 per cent of the economically active population."