Foreign workplace spends £200k on ‘disaster media coaching’ in £4m advisor splurge

The Foreign Office spent almost £4 million of taxpayers money on consultants final 12 months – together with £200,000 on “crisis media training days”.

It’s greater than double the determine the division spent on exterior advisors the earlier 12 months. It comes because the division’s spending on momentary company workers additionally reached a document excessive of almost £40 million – a rise of greater than 850% since 2018.

A £200,000 contract for ‘crisis media training’ was signed simply days after David Cameron ’s shock return to frontline politics as Foreign Secretary. The coaching days will see workers skilled on the best way to “present the public face” of the Government to the media “during a crisis response.”

Civil servants shall be taught the best way to “manage the media in a crisis setting, roaming media, social media and managing crisis specific messaging”, the contract reveals. The Foreign Office has discovered from a sequence of crises, below six overseas secretaries in simply 5 years – together with the botched evacuation of Afghans from Kabul in August 2021.

And in April this 12 months, the Foreign Office was once more accused of abandoning UK residents after delays in evacuation for civilians from war-torn Sudanese capital Khartoum. In 2021, the Sunday Mirror revealed the Home Office below Priti Patel had used taxpayers’ money to rent a non-public disaster administration firm to assist them cope with ‘incidents’ in 2020.

Black Dog Crisis Management was employed in March 2020 to ship a “debriefing exercise” with workers within the division at a value of £16,000. And in November 2020, they had been introduced 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 establish which crises the agency was introduced in to cope with.