Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many staff in his Department have been allocated to deal with issues related to international trade in (a) each of the past five years and (b) the next two years; and if he will make a statement.

There are currently 13 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff working on trade in the Cabinet Secretariat and 6 FTE working on international government procurement, which includes procurement policy within trade negotiations. That number has fluctuated over the past five years, including when staff were redeployed on a temporary basis in support of the Government's response to the war in Ukraine and to tackle the Covid pandemic. We are in the process of planning workforce arrangements for the next two years.