Trade: Commonwealth

(asked on 12th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many civil servants are working on initiatives aimed at increasing intra-Commonwealth trade.


This question was answered on 27th October 2020

The Department for International Trade (DIT)’s Trade Policy Group (TPG) has a strong core of trade policy officials, with a headcount as of end September 2020 of 676 civil servants. Within TPG there are dedicated teams in charge of bilateral trade relations with Commonwealth members, including Australia, New Zealand, and India, as well as multilateral and regional teams, such as the World Trade Organisation and Africa teams.

In addition, DIT’s overseas network of posts (Global Trade and Investment Overseas) is responsible for supporting UK exports and investment across the world. It is formed of nine regions, each reporting to a trade commissioner, known as Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner (HMTC), seven of whom cover Commonwealth countries as part of their trade responsibilities. As of September 2020, there are 151 UK-based civil servants – supported by 1,320 locally engaged staff – working in all HMTC regions.

Workstreams aimed at increasing intra-Commonwealth trade are progressed by teams of varying sizes, depending on their complexity, and DIT officials also work in close co-operation with civil servants across government, including the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), as well as in diplomatic and consular posts across the Commonwealth.

The workforce data only includes civil servants employed by DIT working in the UK and on DIT payroll, and UK based civil servants and locally employed staff working overseas paid via FCDO payroll who are currently engaged in delivering DIT objectives. It does not include staff on loan to DIT from other government departments who remain on their home departments payroll, contractors, military staff, people on secondment from other organisations, those who are on loan or secondment out of DIT, those on unpaid special leave or a career break, and people working in UK Export Finance (UKEF).

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