A former member of Gordon Brown’s Labour government has claimed that unqualified civil servants were appointed to top jobs because they were women.

Ex-Work and Pensions minister Helen Goodman said that there had been a panic to get women into high-profile, "visible" positions.

As a result, she said posts were awarded to candidates who did not have the "depth of experience" needed.

Experts said they could not comment on her specific claims but said that the evidence was that women were still not getting the most senior jobs in Whitehall.

Her comments are not the first time that Ms Goodman has ignited controversy.

Earlier this year she suggested that Labour members should back Yvette Cooper as their leader because she was a working mother.

Critics claimed the move was an attack on another candidate, Liz Kendall, who does not have children, something Ms Goodman has denied.

Questioning City regulators about the collapse of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) as a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee last week, Ms Goodman asked if part of the bank's problems had been linked to senior appointments because "the City came late to the issue of gender balance in visible positions?

“And was then desperately looking for people and was maybe appointing people who did not have the depth of experience which they needed to have?"

She added: “I say in parenthesis that I know that happened in Whitehall.”

Speaking afterwards, Ms Goodman told The Herald: “At around the same time (as the HBOS collapse) I can remember having a conversation with someone very senior person in the Foreign Office who was saying that they were under pressure to appoint women as ambassadors around the world.”

Ms Goodman said that the problem was that senior managers “had not been thinking about managing these (women's) careers.

“You can find that people are perfectly capable, but sometimes they lack the experience or skills that you need to have.

"And you are not doing the organisation or (the women) themselves any favours by appointing them.”

“It is no good panicking and appointing some bright 45-year-old," added Ms Goodman, who was a Work and Pensions minister in the last Labour government and a civil servant in the Treasury before entering frontline politics.

"You need to look at (building) their career from they are 28.”

Dr Catherine Haddon, an author and fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said that her research had shown that women were still not getting top Whitehall jobs.]

While the Civil Service as a whole is 53 per cent female, women hold just over a third of senior posts and less than 20 per cent of permanent secretaries.

Dr Haddon: “Whitehall’s most senior figures are still much more likely to be men, despite the fact that today’s civil service is made up of more women.

"The experience of women in Whitehall over the last 30 years shows that senior officials and ministers need to consider the culture of its senior ranks, and the attributes it rewards, if it is to increase the number of women in top roles.

“Our research shows that most senior jobs in government have also never been held by a woman, including the head of the civil service itself.

"A woman has never been the top official in charge of the Treasury or Foreign Office, and of the 12 principal private secretaries to the Prime Minister since 1983, all have been men.”

Last year Ms Goodman was also accused of sexism after she described female cabinet ministers as “puppets” whose wardrobes were the most interesting thing about them.

She later deleted the tweet insisting it had been meant as light-hearted.

She also sparked fury, following comments by the English Health Secretary on his wife's home country of China, when she tweeted: “If China is so great, why did @Jeremy_Hunt's wife come to England?"