13 January 2024 , 19:36
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The Foreign Office spent nearly £4 million of taxpayers cash on consultants last year - including £200,000 on “crisis media training days”.
It’s more than double the figure the department spent on outside advisors the previous year. It comes as the department’s spending on temporary agency staff also reached a record high of nearly £40 million - an increase of more than 850% since 2018.
A £200,000 contract for ‘crisis media training’ was signed just days after David Cameron ’s shock return to frontline politics as Foreign Secretary. The training days will see staff trained on how to “present the public face” of the Government to the media “during a crisis response.”
Civil servants will be taught how to “manage the media in a crisis setting, roaming media, social media and managing crisis specific messaging”, the contract reveals. The Foreign Office has learned from a series of crises, under six foreign secretaries in just five years - including the botched evacuation of Afghans from Kabul in August 2021.
And in April this year, the Foreign Office was again accused of abandoning UK citizens after delays in evacuation for civilians from war-torn Sudanese capital Khartoum. In 2021, the Sunday Mirror revealed the Home Office under Priti Patel had used taxpayers’ cash to hire a private crisis management company to help them deal with ‘incidents’ in 2020.
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Black Dog Crisis Management was hired in March 2020 to deliver a “debriefing exercise” with staff in the department at a cost of £16,000. And in November 2020, they were brought in for a second time to “deliver impartial debriefing exercise and follow-up work following a complex critical incident”. This second contract was valued at £19,200.
The Home Office refused to identify which crises the firm was brought in to deal with.