The UK’s capacity to secure the best free trade deals after Brexit has been thrown into doubt by figures showing only around 30 civil servants attended a session on how to negotiate a trade agreement.
The revelation came in a report by MPs on the foreign affairs select committee, in which the body responsible for training free trade negotiators said it had intended to train 240 staff up to expert standard by Brexit day on March next year, but so far only 90 were at that level.
The head of the Diplomatic Academy, Jon Benjamin, told the committee the targets were challenging, adding: “We will be dealing with counterpart officials in other countries who may have been doing this for many years,perhaps exclusively so.”
Some have claimed that the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May severely hampers the UK’s ability to negotiate free trade deals independent of the EU. Donald Trump implied on Monday that the EU had negotiated a Brexit deal with the UK that left it unable to strike free trade deals with the US, a point strongly contested by Downing Street.
But the slow progress in training up trade negotiators, a job that was left to the European Union for the past 40 years, has raised questions about whether the UK was equipped to negotiate free trade deals around the world, even if it became legally entitled to do so.
What happens next if May’s Brexit deal is voted down?
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If MPs reject the deal, there are seven possible paths the country could go down next.
May brings it back to MPsPerhaps with minor tweaks after a dash to Brussels. MPs knuckle under and vote it through.
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