Staff at HM Revenue and Customs have been slated for holding a seminar on the "Guilt of Being British" during working hours.

The hour-long session, run by "HMRC Race Network" from 11am to midday on Tuesday, was titled "Guilt of Being British: Listening Circle".

It was advertised as "a powerful, interactive, and reflective listening circle exploring the emotional complexity of being South Asian and British" which would cover topics including "the emotional weight of colonial history".

The session, which was part of the department's commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), pledged to "delve into themes of guilt, pride, and identity, offering space for personal stories and cultural insights", according to a post on HMRC's intranet.

Participants were told they would explore "the duality of identity - balancing heritage and belonging" alongside the "emotional weight of colonial history and inherited trauma".

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Staff at HM Revenue and Customs have been slated for holding a seminar on the 'Guilt of Being British'

But Tory chief Kemi Badenoch lambasted the event as "nonsense" as she urged Whitehall staffers to leave the service if they were not proud of Britain.

"Is it any wonder the public hate dealing with HMRC, now we learn the staff are being taught to feel guilty about being British?" Badenoch told the Mail.

"In Government, I fought to remove all this nonsense from the Civil Service.

"Under my leadership, a Conservative Government will ensure public bodies are proud of Britain, not ashamed of it.

"We'll defend our history, not apologise for it. And if that offends the Civil Service's seminar circuit, they're welcome to go somewhere else."

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Elsewhere at the session, attendees were told they could learn more about "career challenges faced by South Asian women - barriers, bias and expectations" as well as discovering how "storytelling and representation help reclaim our narratives".

However, not everyone within the department seemed to agree with the event.

"This example of a work-time staff event pushing a highly divisive anti-British narrative perfectly encapsulates the nightmare that is Civil Service staff networks," one Whitehall source told the Mail.

The source added: "Those focused on race and trans in particular seem to operate entirely without scrutiny, and attract large numbers of activist staff, intent on pushing their personal beliefs on their colleagues rather than identifying and tackling actual workplace issues.

"This is a total abandonment of the vital principle of Civil Service political neutrality and makes a lot of us very uncomfortable, but if you challenge these groups on their approaches you risk putting a target on your back.

"As is seen in this event, these networks also enable many people to treat the workplace like their personal therapy centres."

Former Tory minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg added: "It is peculiar that people who hate their country want to run it.

"Perhaps I should offer a course on why being British is to win first prize in the lottery of life."

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It comes as patience dwindles with HMRC's performance - as hundreds of thousands of calls from taxpayers go unanswered every month.

Earlier this year, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee produced a report which found HMRC answered just 66.4 per cent of customers' attempts to speak with an adviser, well below the target of 85 per cent.

Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers are fed up of bankrolling woke staff networks.

"While HMRC quangocrats sit around in circle whining about colonialism, hard-working Brits are being left on hold for hours on end.

"Staff networks should not be funded by taxpayers and they certainly shouldn't be happening during working hours."

While it is not known how many of the 60,000 HMRC staff attended the event, a spokesman for the department said it would have been less than 0.1 per cent and had no impact on its call-handling ability.