Ambassador roles set to be opened to non-civil servants
SOME OF Britain’s top diplomatic jobs are to be opened up to noncivil servants as part of a push to recruit “under-represented groups” as the UK revamps and expands its overseas operations, Jeremy Hunt is to announce.
With Brexit just five months away the Foreign Secretary will use a speech today to say “we must reinvigorate and expand British diplomacy”.
He will tell an audience at the Policy Exchange think-tank that almost 1,000 new diplomatic jobs will be created, abroad and in the UK, and foreign language training widened.
It will include opening up some ambassador roles to external candidates, with Mr Hunt due to say: “The strength of our network is its professionalism, which has given us what I believe is the finest diplomatic service in the world.
“But we must never close our eyes to the approaches and skills of other industries.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said the move “builds on a university outreach programme launched earlier this year which aims to encourage applications from under-represented groups”.
British ambassadors are traditionally civil servants, often with a long career in the diplomatic service.
This is in contrast to other countries like the US, where the president can nominate ambassadors, which then have to be approved by the Senate.
Donald Trump made Woody Johnson, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets American football team, his ambassador in London last year.
The expansion of the British diplomatic network, which the FCO says it the largest in a generation, includes hundreds of new jobs, with 335 new diplomatic positions overseas, 328 in London, and 329 “new locally engaged staff ” abroad.
With an eye on future trade deals the Foreign Office will open a new mission to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) in Jakarta, Indonesia, along with a new embassy in the east African nation of Djibouti and an upgrading of the mission in Chad to a full embassy.
At the same time language training will be expanded to allow the number of diplomats working abroad who speak the local language to double from 500 to 1,000, the Foreign Secretary will say. The number of languages that will be taught will increase from 50 to 70.
We must reinvigorate and expand British diplomacy. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt