Michael Dugher MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said:

“The Department for Education increasingly looks like a get-together for Gove and Cameron’s nearest and dearest. They have stuffed the Department full of cronies and Conservative donors.

"We know that top Tory donors can buy access to Downing Street, they can buy policies like the millionaires’ tax cut. Now it seems you can buy a plum job running a government quango. No wonder people think that David Cameron stands up for the wrong people.

“There are serious questions to answer about whether the integrity of the civil service’s impartiality is being compromised.

“The perception remains that appointments are as a result of a top-down, systematic attempt to politicise the civil service.”