Iain Duncan Smith says UK Brexit negotiating team ‘not up to job’ Former Tory leader says expertise needed to brought in

A senior Tory Brexiteer has warned the UK’s Brexit negotiating team is not up to the job as the government prepares to reveal its demands from the trade talks this week.

Ministers are expected to sign off the UK’s negotiating mandate for the trade talks with Brussels Tuesday before publishing it on Thursday.

But Iain Duncan-Smith, the former Conservative leader, raised fears that the UK would be entering into what are expected to be a bruising set of negotiations under-prepared.

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Outside expertise

He said ministers needed to start drafting in economists from outside the civil service to provide the necessary expertise to take Brussels head on.

“I think there are problems ahead for the UK,” he told BBC 5Live Politics. “One of them is the quality of the people now working on this. If you haven’t negotiated for 40 years you need to reach out to all those people that are involved in negotiations, really good transactional lawyers that exist in the City of London. Proper trade economists. We’ve got very good ones at the moment but we need to bring them in from outside.”

His comments come as government sources believe the EU is in disarray over its own negotiating mandate, with claims the 27 nations are “divided and distracted” heading into next month’s talks.

Mr Duncan-Smith said David Frost, Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, was “fine” but warned his team was not battle-hardened enough to deal with the EU, which has been negotiating trade deals for decades.

Specific skills

“The chief negotiator is fine. All I would say is behind them you need people who are looking through absolutely everything with an understanding of what to look for,” he said.

“We are up against the EU and the EU has been negotiating trade deals for 40 years. So we need to make sure we draw upon the talents of anybody that has skills in this area”

“There are good people in the civil service but some of the very very very specific skills may need to be farmed for outside.”