Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how many staff in her Department have more than (a) one (b) three and (c) five years experience in negotiating trade deals.

Our people are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds and have a corresponding range of experience of international trade negotiations, trade remedies and trade defence working on EU trade negotiations such as Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and multilateral agreements in the WTO.

To build the trade policy and negotiating experience in the Department for International Trade (DIT), over the 24 months to end-March 2020, around 350 places will have been taken by people in DIT on Expert Level training in technical areas of trade policy and around a further 350 places taken on Expert Level Free Trade Agreement negotiations training.