Brexit: Department for International Trade hiring "almost exclusively from Whitehall", says recruitment chief
Written by Civil Service World on 29 November 2016 in News
DIT officials say Whitehall has trebled its trade policy staff numbers since the referendum, and stress focus on training up existing staff rather than drafting in outsiders
The Department for International Trade wants to build the trade skills of existing civil servants rather than buy in outside help as the UK prepares to leave the European Union, according to the new organisation's director of capability.
In the months following this summer's Brexit vote, much attention has been paid to the lack of trade policy experience inside Whitehall, a result of four decades in which responsibility for trade deals involving the UK has been handed to the EU.
The Department for International Trade wants to build the trade skills of existing civil servants rather than buy in outside help as the UK prepares to leave the European Union, according to the new organisation's director of capability.
In the months following this summer's Brexit vote, much attention has been paid to the lack of trade policy experience inside Whitehall, a result of four decades in which responsibility for trade deals involving the UK has been handed to the EU.
"We start from a core that was strong on trade policy," he said. "We had about 45 people in June that were focused on trade policy – albeit within the context of that being a support position for the European Commission in the EU. Now that's the core that we're building from. We're about 100 up from that."
Last week's Autumn Statement confirmed that the Foreign Office and Department for International Trade are to be given an extra £26m a year by 2019-20 to strengthen trade policy capability, and CSW understands that this extra money will lead to a five-fold increase in the number of people working on trade issues across government.
Griffiths said that the DIT's leadership had "an important decision" to make as it expands: whether to "buy" in or "build" trade policy clout.
"Our strong preference will always be to build," he said. "And our focus on recruitment to date has been almost exclusively from Whitehall."
A dedicated trade faculty has already been set up in the Foreign Office to help with what Griffiths called the "huge weight" of building those skills among existing civil servants, and James Norton – DIT's HR and organisational development director – said the department had plans to grow its trade policy staff numbers to 350 "by the end of the year".
John Alty, the DIT's director general for trade policy said the department's work remained "very much at a planning and exploratory stage" before next year's expected triggering of Article 50, the formal process by which the UK kicks off two years of talks on its EU exit.
Until then, Alty pointed out, the UK has "an obligation as members of the EU not to run an independent trade policy", although he said the department had already heard from countries "interested in talking to us about future trading arrangements".
"We obviously feed into the preparations for the Article 50 negotiations in so far as they may affect trade," he said. "But the direction of travel will become clearer as the government takes these decisions about how it wants to negotiate with the EU."
Meanwhile, Griffiths set out the scale of the task facing the DIT in the years ahead, pointing out that a typical free trade agreement is split into 20 to 30 chapters, each covering a different area of the economy. Such agreements are, he said, usually supported by a team of "50-100 people, depending on how big the negotiation is".
Griffiths said that striking deals at that scale will call for officials both with detailed policy knowledge and the "experience and skills to carry out a negotiation in a very complex multi-stakeholder environment".
It was on this second area, he added, where Whitehall may need to eventually draw on outside help.
"We've done a lot of the latter in the civil service in the past," he said. "But I think it would be a mistake to just look at the civil service and so, as we move into that detailed negotiation phase [...] in the future we would certainly be looking to have those posts opened to the best and the brightest both in the public and private sectors."
Oliver Griffiths, director of capability at the trade department, told a parliamentary committee last year that trade negotiators were not “mythical creatures” and many civil servants had the relevant skills. He said at the time that Whitehall needed to recruit “across the piece” to address the shortage of trade negotiators, but said the “strong preference” was to recruit internally.
Policy Engagement: Meeting with the United States …
https://www.babinc.org/pe-traderep-dit
BritishAmerican Business will host Assistant USTR Dan Mullaney and Department for International Trade, Director of Americas Negotiations, Oliver Griffiths, for a roundtable with BAB Members on the work of the UK-US Trade and Investment Group and present issues affecting transatlantic trade and investment
Boris gives ‘cast iron guarantee’ NHS is NOT up for sale ...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10432994/jeremy-corbyn-produce…
9 hours ago · "Oliver Griffiths, the Director for Americas Negotiations at the Department for International Trade, (OG) followed by updating on recent …
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38143122
The UK is retraining civil servants as post-Brexit trade negotiators but is also set to "buy in" expertise from outside, a top official has told MPs.
The UK's capacity to negotiate trade deals with other countries after Brexit has been queried, with up to 100 staff needed alone for a single agreement.
Oliver Griffiths said negotiators were not "mythical creatures" and current staff had many of the skills required.
But he said the civil service would need to recruit "across the piece".
Whitehall is expected to have to recruit thousands - as many as 30,000 according to a recent internal Deloitte's assessment - of civil servants to deal with the challenge of extricating the UK from the EU after June's referendum vote.
There are particular concerns about a shortage of trade negotiators, given that many of the UK's most experienced professionals in this field are currently working for the EU - which arranges trade deals for all member states including the UK - and are not guaranteed to return.
'Experienced core'
Giving evidence to MPs on the international trade select committee, senior officials said they were "ramping up" their operations in light of the Brexit vote - with the new international trade department led by Liam Fox now employing 2,700 staff.
Mr Griffiths, the department's director of trade policy capability, said the UK had 45 trade policy experts at the time of the referendum vote and this number was now "100 up on that".
"We start from a core that was strong on trade policy... albeit that being a support position for the European Commission," he said.
Although there was more to trade policy than negotiating bilateral agreements, Mr Norton acknowledged that reaching deals with countries outside the EU after Brexit would draw heavily on the department's resources in the coming years.
"A free trade agreement is typically 20 to 30 chapters, covering a particular area like agriculture or services," he explained. "You would tend to have an individual that is leading at that chapter level - a specialist that understands that policy area very well.
"You will then have a level of deputies that will provide the co-ordination and oversight of the text that is being produced and then you will have a chief negotiator that sits at the top. It is a pyramid structure and you can imagine a free trade agreement team being 50 to 100 people."
'Mythical creature'
As it looked to supplement its already "experienced" team, Mr Griffiths said the civil service's "strong preference" was to recruit internally - meaning training existing civil servants rather than recruiting negotiators from other countries.
But he added: "We have an important decision to make which is effectively do we buy or build. The focus of our recruitment to date has almost exclusively been from Whitehall. But what that puts is a huge weight in terms of up-skilling and training.
"We have a trade faculty that has been set up by the Foreign Office that is going to be playing a huge role."
Asked by SNP MP Angus MacNeil, who chairs the committee, whether the UK was simply replacing an experienced Brussels-based bureaucracy with a less experienced London-based one, Mr Griffiths said there was a danger trade negotiators were being seen as "mythical creatures".
To be a negotiator, he said, people had to understand the policy areas at stake and to have the experience and skills to "carry out a negotiation in a very complex multi-stakeholder environment".
"We have done a lot of the latter in the civil service in the past but I think it would be a mistake to just look at the civil service," he added.
"As we move into that open and detailed negotiation phase, we will certainly be looking to have posts that are open to the best and brightest in both the public and private sectors."
I'm going to have to put this here as well
More intriguing than a John le Carré thriller, the shadowy story behind Brexit is a tailor-made blockbuster involving eccentric billionaires, far-right cabals, spies, spivs, technological skulduggery and a host of unscrupulous politicians supported by an unwitting cast of millions of UK citizens.
The Westminster Lair
Central to the story, an opulent area of Westminster; the lair of a plethora of right-wing, far-right and lunatic fringe climate change deniers, which are centred on 55 and 57 Tufton Street.
Owned by businessman Richard Smith, 55 Tufton Street has stealthily played a significant role in what could be the defining moment in 21st century UK political history. It’s now the visible tip of an enormous neocon iceberg whose raison d’être is to deliver a mechanism for radical change of a magnitude that will massively impact the lives of a still largely oblivious UK population.
Within the walls of these innocuous Westminster town houses, a well-funded collection of closely connected groups have been diligently astroturfing, lobbying, coercing, plotting and scheming with politicians and media platforms for years with the aim of delivering a Brexit that would be consistent with the ideology of their foreign paymasters.
The Nine Entities
55 Tufton St, we learn from Shahmir Sanni, the whistleblower who was involved with Vote Leave, who was also a tenant before moving to nearby Westminster Tower, then BeLeave and the Tax Payers’ Alliance, against whom he has brought a claim for unfair dismissal, is where what he describes as ‘The Nine Entities’ meet. These entities are:
- The Adam Smith Institute (Great Smith St)
- Brexit Central (55)
- The Centre for Policy Studies (57)
- Civitas (55)
- The Global Warming Policy Foundation (55)
- The Institute for Economic Affairs (Lord North St)
- Leave means Leave (55)
- The Office of Peter Whittle (The New Culture Forum) (55)
- The Tax Payers’ Alliance (55)
Shahmir recounts how these ‘Nine Entities’ took part in biweekly meetings chaired by ex BBC and Telegraph journalist, Jonathan Isaby, who having worked at the ‘Tax Payers’ Alliance’ since 2011, when he was appointed their political director, became their chief executive in 2014, and then ‘moved’ to Brexit Central to become their editor; a common enough scenario amongst the ‘Nine Entities’ apparently, who Shahmir alleges operate a ‘revolving door’ policy of employment between each other.
Shahmir explains:
“Meetings take place at 55 Tufton Street every other Tuesday (“The Tuesday Meetings”). Attendance at the Tuesday Meetings varies, but is usually attended by all or substantially all of the Nine Entities. The Respondent and its staff lead the Tuesday Meetings, which are typically chaired by Mr Isaby. The purpose of the Tuesday Meetings is to agree a common line on political topics in the news between the Nine Entities, and to co-ordinate the public messaging that the individual organisations can then issue on that topic.”
The Thin Veil Slips
During the referendum, Vote Leave was at pains to distance itself from the Arron Banks funded Leave.EU and particularly their frontman, Nigel Farage.
Vote Leave’s rationale was that Leave.EU and Farage had a reputation for trading in the gutter, a gutter overflowing with society’s racist element, a reputation that could have easily discouraged their own supporters from voting to leave the EU.
Despite this reservation, Vote Leave weren’t adverse to using the votes Farage brought with him to get the Leave campaign over the line; just 635,000 votes swung the election in Leave’s favour.
But today, that thin veil of contentious respectability has slipped. Faced with a resurgent Remain movement, as the Brexit turkeys come home to roost, Leave means Leave has found a home at 55 Tufton St.
Co-founded by Richard Tice, an active member of the Leave.EU hierarchy, Leave means Leave has now welcomed Nigel Farage who’s using it as a platform for his ‘return to frontline politics’.
As seen below, Leave means Leave is almost a reincarnation of Conservatives for Britain, little more than a collection of impotent right-wing backbenchers and ERG members who excel in little more than populist rhetoric and dog-whistle politics.
Leave means Leave’s chosen home is a significant development in that, for the first time, it brings two of the main characters of the separate strands of the Leave campaign into proximity at 55 Tufton St, Matthew Elliott and Nigel Farage.
High profile, charismatic, media savvy Farage has always been there to distract the electorate away from the true objectives of Brexit.
From UKIP, through to Leave.EU and now Leave means Leave, the same simple yet effective messaging of taking back control of borders, sovereignty and trade policy from unelected EU bureaucrats is the false populist rhetoric designed to maximise media attention and mislead their target; the low-information voter, so essential to the delivery of the EU referendum, who is fed-up with what’s on offer from our two main parties.
By comparison, the adenoidal Elliott maintains a much lower profile. A far less charismatic individual, he appears clumsy, awkward and easily challengeable during combative media appearances.
However, where Elliott excels is in his tenacious approach and being politically attuned to like-minded individuals from the international far-right. He’s made the UK’s secession from the EU his life’s work, as can be seen in this quote from a letter he sent to Vote Leave coordinator and now adviser to Leavers for London, (before mysteriously disappearing from their website), Alexander Shayler:
DEAR ALEXANDER,WE DID IT! IT WAS THE BIGGEST DECISION OF OUR LIFETIMES; MANY OF US HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS CHANCE FOR DECADES; THE COUNTRY DID THE RIGHT THING, AND VOTED LEAVE.
A graduate of the London School of Economics, Elliott is a founding member of many of the groups at Tufton St who have engineered the real Brexit; not the Leave campaign fantasy wrapped in a union flag but the real far-right ideology designed to deliver a low-tax, small state, deregulated economy that will have a detrimental affect on the lives of the very UK citizens they coerced into believing they were voting Leave for reasons other than to negatively impact the NHS, public services, schools and the day-to-day lives of the vast majority of the people of the UK.
The LSE describes its BSc Government degree as “Politics is about power, conflict and ideas. The study of politics involves analysis of the ways in which individuals and groups define and interpret political issues and seek to shape government decisions.” Elliott took to this like a duck to water and, since graduating with a First in this subject, he’s attempted to practice exactly what he was preached.
Setting up groups as vehicles designed to shape government decisions was a strategy enthusiastically embraced by Elliott. It was also a strategy used to promote an agenda set by people from another country.
Beginning with the Tax payers’ Alliance, as a co-founder with Andrew Allum, Elliott went on to become a founding member of Business for Britain (the prototype for Vote Leave), Big Brother Watch and, alongside Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave.
Whilst at Vote Leave Elliott was involved in the registration of a host of grassroots organisations that appeared to be simply a delivery method for Vote Leave’s astroturfing tactics. Prior to the referendum, over twenty groups, all using the ‘for Britain’ title, were registered, including Muslims for Britain, Veterans for Britain and Women for Britain.
Post-referendum, Elliott went on to set-up BrexitCentral, manned predominantly by personnel from Elliott’s stable, such as former fashion student, Darren Grimes who was magically transformed into their deputy editor behind Jonathan Isaby. BrexitCentral surprisingly secured unfettered access to Parliament by obtaining a journalistic pass allowing them to gain access to prime minister’s briefings and the lobby; much to the chagrin of traditional journalists attempting to report the facts rather than attempting to deliver little more than an agenda.
Elliott’s Brexit strategy wasn’t simply deployed during the months prior to the referendum. Following the 2015 general election, Elliott was involved in setting up Conservatives for Britain, a group of MPs that included the usual suspects such as Steve Baker, David Campbell Bannerman MEP, Bernard Jenkin, Bill Cash, John Redwood, Owen Paterson, James Cleverly and Tom Pursglove; a vehicle for backbenchers who organised a rebellion in the Commons to ensure purdah was reinstated into the Referendum Bill. You can watch Elliott explain here how an organisation not yet formed, set-up ‘Conservatives for Britain’.
Elliott explained that this small victory “was absolutely vital for a fair and balanced campaign” which, in hindsight, was an astonishing claim now that the full facts surrounding Vote Leave’s campaign strategy and tactics are a matter of record.
The evidence was there for all to see a long time before the referendum. The Electoral commission knew of Steve Baker’s plan to set-up organisations to circumvent the spending restrictions; they were also aware that in November 2015, Vote Leave set-up a fake company so that two students could heckle David Cameron at the CBI conference.
The stunt was widely described as “grubby” and former minister Eric Pickles called for Vote Leave to be denied the lead status for the then forthcoming referendum, but campaign Dominic Cummings responded, “You think it’s nasty? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
We now know that Elliot and Cummings’ Vote Leave carried on lying, cheating and breaking the law with impunity; friends in high places indeed.
Elliott had also played a significant role in the ill-fated ‘Conservative Friends of Russia’, an organisation whose Tory MP membership later resembled rats deserting a sinking ship when the groups motives were brought into question following the discovery that their head contact at the Russian Embassy, Sergey Nalobin, was a spy who was later expelled from Britain.
Echoing the later cultivation of Leave.EU’s Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore by the Russians, the group was thought to be little more than an FSB influence operation, causing the organisation to later reinvent itself as ‘The Westminster Russia Forum’.
Away from the think tank world, the ever busy Elliott was also a partner in ‘Awareness Analytics Partners’, known as A2P, this company specialises in areas similar to Cambridge Analytica. A2P is funded by the ultra conservative, creationist DeVos family and the Koch brothers, people who are synonymous with right-wing organisations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. You can read Wendy Siegelman’s excellent investigation into Elliott’s involvement in A2P here.
Most intriguing of all, Elliott has had substantial involvement with two heavyweight organisations, the Atlas Network and the Legatum Institute.
Elliott and The Legatum Institute
Since January 2017 Elliott had been a senior fellow of the secretive and publicity shy Legatum Institute; a senior fellow until they decided to distance themselves from him, along with fellow poputchik, their Director of Economic policy, Shanker Singham.
Bad publicity for Legatum, concerning Elliott and Singham’s high-profile involvement in shaping the government’s Brexit policy, came to a head when MP Liam Byrne, using parliamentary priviledge, suggested that Legatum was being financed through money ultimately derived from Russia. Legatum, since the arrival of Elliott and Singham, had forged close links with Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and were constantly in the news as their frequent policy meetings with the government were widely reported.
This attention was far too much for New Zealander Christopher Chandler, the Dubai based businessman and founding partner of the Legatum Group who in turn had pumped millions into the London based Legatum Institute. Elliott and Singham both left in March 2018 with Singham subsequently finding employment at ‘nine entities member’ the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Now at the IEA, Singham simply carried on where he had left off with Legatum, as can be seen here in this Newsnight video:
http://www.brexitshambles.com/brexit-scam-we-need-to-talk-about-tufton-street/
1 comment:
I'm sorry, I'm not a well lady, I'm doing my best to stop this country being destroyed by these scumbags.I've left the link to that article at the bottom of the post. I hope people will follow the link as there are videos to watch, I just want to make sure people read it.
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